Second Fiddles
by ConcertiGrossi
Summary: An unlikely romance with really, really terrible timing. Phil Coulson/Cellist (6/7) Chapter Six: In which the ferryman is cheated, more lies are told, secrets are revealed, and every answer raises more questions.
1. Chapter 1

As always, I am nothing without my excellent beta-readers Rex Luscus, Jep, Ishymaria and Pink Siamese. I owe them for their sage advice, their unfailing moral support, and their willingness to put up with random bits of headcanon dropped into their inboxes at any given time. Thanks, guys, I really, really appreciate it. The vast majority of this was written before the Blu-Ray came out and without having seen the deleted scenes, so I can almost guarantee bits will be Jossed. Given that this is based on a movie series based on some Marvel comic books, I will argue that all of it is 100% canon-compliant, just in a slightly different universe. :)

* * *

"Now, this is a last minute addition to the catalog, sorry for the lack of advance notice, but we've got an original vintage 1943 Captain America 'Buy War Bonds!' poster in B+ condition. A real find for the serious collector!"

Phil Coulson blinked. _Damn it._ If he'd known this was going to be on the block, he would have structured this weekend's purchases very differently.

"Because this wasn't part of the preview yesterday, we're going to take a half an hour break, so that y'all can come up and take a look. We'll be back here at 4:00PM on the dot."

Looking blasé and disinterested (he was very good at that), Phil ambled up to the stand that held the framed poster. It was from the very first series of small-format posters they did, with Cap holding the heater version of the shield and saluting. And the auctioneer wasn't kidding about the condition.

He knew just which wall it was going on in his apartment.

He turned and went back to his seat, and made a show of indifferently checking his cell phone. The rest of the half-hour crawled by, but finally the auctioneer returned, and they got started. "You've had your chance to gawk, now what am I going to be offered for this fine piece of militaria? We're going to start the bidding at $50, do I hear $75, I do, let's hear $100..."

This was not Phil Coulson's first dance. He let the dilettantes get started and waited until the action slowed down before entering the fray. "I have $350, do I hear four? It's a steal at four, folks, going once, going twice..."

He raised his paddle. "I have four, thank you, sir, do I hear four-twenty-five, I do, yes, thank you, ma'am…"

His toes dug in as the numbers kept going up. One by one, the bidders dropped out, until it was only him and number 216 across the room. "Well, we've got a bidding war on, folks, we're at $600, ma'am, do I hear $625? Thank you. Sir, are you going to let that stand? $650 it is, over to you? Do I hear $675? I do indeed…"

He glanced over at 216 as he returned the bid. The woman stared at him impassively, and then nodded at the auctioneer to up the ante again.

When the bidding hit $800, he groaned inwardly. It was his hard-and-fast rule, after that one unfortunate incident in Atlanta: he was only allowed to spend the cash he brought with him. And he did not have more than $800 in his wallet.

"Do I hear $825, sir? $825?

It absolutely killed him to do so, but he shook his head.

"Gentleman lets the lady have the final word, sold for $800 to 216, lady at the back."

There was a smattering of applause. He nodded to her, and she smiled at him.

_Oh well_, he thought philosophically, _more money for the Dealers' Room_.

He sought consolation at the vintage comics tables.

"You know, you could've saved me a lot of money if you'd just accepted your inevitable defeat right away," came a voice at his shoulder while he was looking at a display case of rarities.

He straightened up, turned, and was immediately caught by the pretty brown eyes sparkling at him – there was his adversary, a large bag clutched in her hands, grinning mischievously.

"Yes, but that would've just cheapened your eventual victory," he replied.

"Well, yes, that's my point. And I still would have appreciated it the same amount. More, in fact, since I'd still have the cash to pay for a nicer frame." Blushing a little, she held out her hand. "Alys Simon."

"Phil Coulson," he replied, and shook her hand.

The SHIELD-issued part of his brain said: caucasian female, 5'1", slight build, approximately 45 years of age. Black hair, grey streaks, brown eyes, light complexion. A few freckles, small mole on her neck. Right-handed, fingertips on left hand heavily callused – plays a string instrument? Short, unpainted fingernails on both hands: not guitar; no discoloration on jawline: not violin or viola; build makes double bass unlikely. A cellist. Extremely successful or independently wealthy, or...

The rest of his brain said: oh, for God's sake, shut the fuck up.

His mouth said, "Well, let me make it up to you... can I buy you a drink?"

She smiled. "I'd like that, Phil. Will you come with me while I drop this off in my room?"

"Lead the way," he replied.

He stood politely at the doorway as she went in. As he watched, she pulled the framed poster out of the bag and set it up on the bureau. She stepped back and eyed it critically. "I think it looks good there – what do you think?" she asked, looking over at him slyly.

"Now you're just being cruel," he said.

"I am. Terrible of me, isn't it? You're still on the hook for the drink, though."

"And I'm regretting it already," he said, blatantly lying.

—

They found a quiet table at the bar.

"Well, I'd ask if you come here often, but..."

She smiled. "Annually, as it happens. And you?"

"I come whenever my schedule permits. My job requires a lot of travel, but I'm in New York most of the time."

"What is it that you do?"

"I work for the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division."

"SHIELD? Really? So if you told me what you actually did, you'd have to kill me?"

"Something like that." That was a bit surprising – SHIELD wasn't on most civilians' radar at all. "What about you?"

"That's the funny thing about New York, isn't it: you have to travel three thousand miles to meet someone from home. I'm third-chair cellist with the Empire Chamber Orchestra." Her face beamed with pride.

"Impressive. Wait, you're telling me I lost that poster to a starving artist?"

"I'm afraid you did. You see, I got together with the rest of the consumptives in the garrett, and we all pooled our money..."

Drinks became dinner.

"You're having me on," she declared.

"Scout's honor."

"No! I'll have to see it to believe it – how did you find number three? NOBODY has number three. Did you have to kill someone? You had to kill someone, didn't you."

He had pictures of the trading cards on his phone (the insurance company had demanded them) so he brought them up and showed them to her. "I will say it wasn't easy..."

"Oh. My. God. The last time I saw the entire collection in one place was at the Smithsonian. That's amazing."

He grinned. "Thank you." It was really nice to talk obsessions with someone who understood. Between the two of them, they could quote pages of dialogue from the movies, they both preferred the "717" comic book series to the "Elemental," they loved the old cartoons, and they commiserated about the complete abominations that were the Michael Bay remakes of the original films. It felt weird to be talking so un-self-consciously about it, but if you couldn't be out of this particular closet here, where could you? "Though the guy I bought seven and five from? His set was actually signed…"

"Well, that's kind of a high bar to set for yourself, don't you think? Considering?" she laughed.

Dinner became dessert.

"Rebellion, mostly. Mom wasn't so keen on a girl buying comics and she thought that I should be reading more 'elevated literature' rather than wasting my time on science fiction and fantasy. But that just made it all forbidden fruit…"

"Naturally."

"Of course, Pop was no help - every time he returned from deployment, he'd bring a new stack of stuff for me to read under the covers at night. Turns out you can really catch up on your reading while you're out in the middle of the ocean. What about you?"

"I was in a pretty bad car accident when I was ten. When you spend six months flat on your back, that's pretty much all you can do, and the habit stuck. It was either that or watch soaps with my mother."

"Oh yes, you strike me as a 'General Hospital' kind of guy."

"It was 'All My Children,' thank you very much."

And dessert became the wait staff staring at them and dropping anvil-sized hints that they would very much like to go home now. He left them a large tip for their trouble, and escorted her to the elevators.

"Thank you for dinner," she said. "I had a great time."

"It was my pleasure."

They looked at each other for a long moment.

"So. I bought this neat poster today at the auction, would you like to come up and see it?" she asked, arching her eyebrow slightly.

"Yes. Yes, I would," he answered.

He offered her his arm, and she took it. They were the very picture of dignity in the elevator and the hallway, but the façade shattered as soon as the door to her room closed behind them. It was never really clear who kissed whom first, but, by the same token, it never really mattered. He hummed approval as she reached up to run her fingers through his hair, and she made a very encouraging noise as he lifted her up to carry her to the bed.

"Wait… wait…" she said breathlessly.

"What's wrong?" he asked, as she squirmed out from underneath him. She got off the bed, went to the bureau and turned the Captain America poster to the wall. He cracked up. "Better now?" he deadpanned once he'd stopped laughing.

"Much," she said, grinning, and shimmied out of her dress.

They spent the rest of the weekend together, even (occasionally) going to some of the convention events. The last morning, they ordered room service and stayed in bed until the last minute. Hers was the first flight out, and they very reluctantly parted.

"I'd like to see you again, when we're back in New York," he said.

"I'd like that, too," she said. They exchanged cards, writing their personal numbers and e-mail addresses on the back, and kissed once more.

She very nearly missed her plane.

He slept a bit on the flight home from San Diego, then tried to read one of the books she'd suggested he buy. He pulled out her card from his pocket to look at it again, and smiled: Alys Simon, Cellist For Hire. As weekends went, that had been damn near perfect.

His smile faded almost immediately. It had been, hadn't it. A muscle worked in his jaw, and his heart suddenly felt very heavy. He carefully held the card by the edges, so as not to smudge any potential fingerprints, and tucked it away. He rested his head on the window, and stared unseeingly out all the way back to New York.

Some days, he hated what this job had done to his mind.

The next morning, he sat in his office, staring at an open, unmarked manila folder. It contained a sheet with Alys' name on it, all the details she'd given him, and a scan of the fingerprint he'd been able to raise from her card. He kept looking between the folder and his computer screen. He had to do this before he could call her, and he relished neither potential outcome. Either he'd had a run-in with someone trying to compromise him (there was a reason that was the oldest trick in the book), or he was about to know everything about her before he really wanted to.

An alternative solution occurred to him. He picked up the folder and headed to Maria Hill's office.

"How was Nerdapalooza?" Maria asked.

"It was fine. Look, I wonder if I can ask a favor."

"Shoot."

"I need you to run a background check on this person." He handed Maria the thin folder.

"One of those blue space-Indian people causing trouble? Or is she one of the Star Trek aliens with the big ridges on their forehead? It's hard to imagine that a bunch of pencil-necked geeks could merit this kind of scrutiny."

"Is it."

Maria began to type. "So why are we running this check? And, more to the point, why aren't you doing this yourself?"

"Because it has to be done and I don't want to be the one to have done it."

Maria stopped typing abruptly as the realization hit. She looked up to him in surprise, her eyebrows climbing to her hairline.

The corner of his mouth raised a little. "How does that shoe leather taste?"

"With a side of crow, it's not so bad. I'm sorry about that."

"It's all right."

Maria went back to typing, this time taking his request seriously. "Is this her?" she asked, turning her monitor so that Coulson could see – she'd pulled up Alys' passport photo.

"Yes."

Maria turned the screen back around. "She's pretty."

"I thought so."

Maria squinted a little. "She's got a rap sheet."

His heart sank. "For what?"

"October of '87, she and three accomplices were cited in Central Park for busking without a license." Maria grinned and turned the monitor to face him.

He managed to maintain his poker face, but it was a close-run thing. "Well. As the records don't seem to indicate any tendency towards recidivism, I'll take my chances."

Maria chuckled, and looked back at the screen. "Other than her brief flirtation with a life of crime, she checks out. Public records, fingerprint and facial recognition databases all come back clean." She handed him back the folder. "She is who she says she is."

He finally relaxed. "Great. Thank you."

"No problem."

He turned to leave.

"Hey, Coulson?"

"Yes?"

"Good luck. I mean that."

He smiled in earnest. "Thanks."

"And don't do anything I wouldn't do."

"Well, that leaves my options pretty open..." He headed back to his office, shut the door and dialed.

—

"So you're seeing her again?" asked Maria over lunch in the cafeteria.

Coulson's subtle smug look could be discerned only by the connoisseur. "Thursday. There's a 'Buck Rogers' marathon at the Roxy."

"Is that the one with the be-be-de-beep robot?"

He rolled his eyes good-naturedly. "Yes, but this isn't that version - it's the 1939 serial film."

Maria raised an eyebrow. "Your idea, or hers?"

"Hers."

"And these are the mating rituals of your people? Frankly, that's terrifying."

"Remind me again which one of us actually has a date this week."

"Fair point. Okay, but here's the thing I don't get. You've seen for-real aliens. We've got every warm body in R&D trying to reverse-engineer alien technology. You've actually met a real, live, sentient extraterrestrial. Tell me again why you want to watch stories about them in your off-time?"

"The ones I watch in my off-time are somebody else's problem."

—

They both pulled back a little, once they'd returned to New York – what worked for a mad weekend fling didn't necessarily translate into the realities of daily life, even for such unusual lives as they both led.

Her schedule, as he discovered, was nearly as erratic as his – as it was the off-season for the orchestra, she was freelancing and subbing, though for the experience, as he learned, and not for the money. Her situation was made clear after their second post-return date (a somewhat more orthodox dinner out), when she invited him to her place in TriBeCa for a drink. To his surprise, her apartment was large enough – in a building with a doorman, no less - that he started to wonder if Hill hadn't screwed up the background check somehow.

"Nice place," was all he said.

"Thanks! Make yourself comfortable, and I'll get us some wine..." She threw her purse on the chair and went into the kitchen. "Cabernet all right with you?"

"Sure. Do you live here by yourself?" She hadn't mentioned a roommate.

"Yes... we won't be interrupted." She stuck her head out of the kitchen, leaning on the door frame. "Or were you expecting someplace smaller?"

He'd been caught. "Well..." he started.

"Don't be embarrassed! We're both New Yorkers here. Musicians only live in big apartments on bad sitcoms... No, I got it in the divorce."

"Ah. I'm sorry."

"Really? Are you sorry that I live in a nice apartment, or that I'm divorced?"

"Neither, actually, but cheering would be in bad taste."

She laughed. "As divorces went, it was relatively civilized. Basically, he grew up and came to terms with the fact that I am not a cure for homosexuality. His family had no problem with him being gay, but were absolutely furious that he jerked me around for twelve years, so I get to live _la vie Boheme_ in a nice apartment with good health insurance."

Ouch. "That must have been very hard for you."

She shrugged. "It's been long enough now that it's more comedy than tragedy at this point. Honestly, in retrospect, it's actually a bit of a relief."

"Really?"

"Well, the problem in that marriage pretty clearly wasn't me, except in the most generic sense. At any rate, I still talk to him sometimes – he and his husband are very happy." She went back into the kitchen.

It was a nice place – tastefully decorated in the mid-century modern style, but comfortable. There was even a small fireplace on one end of the room and The Poster had pride-of-place above the mantel. An open door led out into what was obviously her practice room. He peeked in: she'd lined the walls with bookshelves (stuffed full with books, sheet music and comic book long boxes), put acoustic tiles on the ceiling and thick carpet on the floor.

She came up to him and handed him a glass of wine. "I tend to practice at odd hours. This cuts down on calls from the neighbors." She owned four cellos. "This one, she was my first. This one is my primary performance instrument, that one is my second-best, and the one in the blue case is my baroque. I used to do a lot more with it, but that ensemble kind of fell apart…"

"Would you play something for me?"

She smiled. "Gladly." She set down her glass of wine on a bookshelf, then pulled out the performance cello and bow, sat in the chair and started to check the tuning. "What would you like to hear?"

"Pachelbel's Canon?" he asked with an innocent look on his face.

She snorted, and pointed her bow at him. "Okay, you're not nearly as funny as you think you are. Seriously, though…"

"Play me your favorite."

"That changes hourly."

"I won't hold you to it."

She smiled again, a softer smile this time, and began to play. Her skill and artistry shone through clearly - the piece was nostalgic and melancholy, but not with the sharp pain of regret; merely the wistful what-might-have-been of a lazy summer Sunday afternoon. When she finished, he blinked and cleared his throat. "That was beautiful."

Her eyes met his. She blushed, and looked away. "Thank you."

"What was it?"

"Tchaikovsky, String Quartet No. 1. The 'Andante Cantabile.' Yo Yo Ma plays it much better than I do… for now."

He laughed. "I'm not sure you've set your sights high enough, there."

She grinned as she put away the instrument. "Just trying not to shoot my foot off. Shall we go sit down?"

The night was shaping up to be much more in keeping with a standard first date, with the usual slightly awkward getting-to-know-you conversations. (The time they'd spent together previously had either involved enthusiastic geekery, or, well, not talking.) She was an only child, and her parents had passed away: her father had been a Navy captain, and her mother was the daughter of a fairly well-off New York family. (And a fairly well-connected one at that: she never said so explicitly, but Phil was nothing if not good at reading between the lines.) She told him about studying music at Bryn Mawr and Columbia, and about picking it up again seriously after her divorce.

He told her about being the youngest of six brothers, growing up in Ohio, and a little bit about his time in the Air Force, before he joined SHIELD.

"You were a pararescue jumper?" she asked in awed tones. "Well, now I am impressed."

"It was a pretty good job, but not always as interesting as you might think."

"Yeah, right, try again - a Navy brat knows full well what a PJ does. Terminal modesty much?"

"Really, most of the time? You spend the majority of your duty hours training and keeping up certifications."

"The operative phrase there being 'most of the time' - something tells me that the paperwork didn't give you all those scars." She eyed his torso and then looked up at him pointedly.

"Clearly you've never had any dealings with the Federal Government. Actually, the worst part is that I lost an inch."

"What?"

"From repeated spinal compressions. I was 5'10" when I went into the service, and I was 5'9" when I outprocessed. I'm still a little annoyed about that."

She winced. "Serve you right for jumping out of so many perfectly good airplanes!"

She seemed a bit surprised that he'd gone to college before enlisting (his father had been adamant that all his sons would graduate college before doing anything else), not so much at his major (biochemistry - he thought it would help with the medical training, which it had), but his minor had proven a bridge too far.

"French!?" She tilted her head quizzically. "_C'est vrai?"_

He replied in accentless French. "Absolutely. Why would you think otherwise?" he teased.

She answered in kind. "Just wondering when you found the time. You are full of surprises, Mr. Coulson."

"You're not doing so badly yourself…"

She shrugged. "Too many years in various orchestra pits. It drives me nuts not to be able to understand what they're singing about on the stage."

The conversation switched back to English, and wended its way around to his own romantic history, as he supposed it had to eventually.

"I'm afraid I'm a bad cliché. I'm married to my job." Or he was a robot, or an alien, or SHIELD had replaced his cerebral cortex with training manuals and operational procedures. He'd heard all the jokes.

"So this is an affair? How exciting! Is your wife the jealous type?"

"Terribly. In all seriousness, my schedule is demanding and unpredictable. And most of what I deal with is classified to the point that I really can't ever talk about it."

Her teasing manner fell away. "My ex worked for the State Department and my father was in the Navy. I know how that has to be - 'Loose Tweets Sink Fleets' and all that. And I'd be a hypocrite to criticize you for working too hard – once the season starts, I'll barely have time to breathe." She smiled. "So you're an admitted workaholic with a job you can't discuss. Anything else you want to warn me about?"

"Well, I can at least assure you that I'm not gay."

She laughed, then set her wineglass down on the coffee table, and fixed him with a gaze of no uncertain meaning.

"Oh yeah? Prove it."

Their third date was another movie - she'd mentioned she hadn't yet seen the newest restoration of "Metropolis," and he had the Blu-Ray. They got take-out from his favorite Indian place and headed to his apartment.

"I'll say it again, I am in awe," she said, standing in front of the case that held his card collection.

He came in from the kitchen, a proud smile on his face.

"They're in amazing condition... how long did that take you?"

"Well, number one actually belonged to my father. My mother found it in his things, after he passed away, and gave it to me. The rest took about three years."

"Was he a fan, too?"

"Yeah. Dad actually saw the USO show when they came through Akron, when he was a kid during the war. He said he and his buddies spent the whole next week collecting metal to turn in because Captain America told them to, but they forgot the part about how it was supposed to be scrap metal. He said that all their parents were completely mystified at the range of bits and pieces that went missing that week – hubcaps and tools and, in one case, a roasting pan – until it was time to take their stash to the collection point. My grandparents were laughing too hard to even give them hell for it, they just made them put all the stuff back."

"That's adorable! I'm glad they didn't get in trouble – they were just trying to do their patriotic duty!"

"Yeah, Gran then tried to sell him on the idea of giving up his allowance to buy war bonds, but that didn't go over as well."

"Well, there are sacrifices, and then there are _sacrifices_." She laughed. "So he got you started?"

"Yeah. There was a theater in the town where I grew up that would show old movies on the Sunday matinee. He and I used to go - my brothers would come too, but not as often as they got older."

"That's sweet. Were you very close?"

"When I was very young. He died when I was ten."

"I'm so sorry. What happened?"

"A car accident."

Her forehead furrowed. "The same car accident?"

He nodded. "We got T-boned. He was killed, and I spent a half-year in a Risser cast. But we were the only two in the car, so it could have been worse."

She drew in a breath. "That's just… I can't even imagine. I'm sorry."

"It's all right. It was a long time ago." After a somewhat awkward pause, he tapped her arm. "Come on, the food's getting cold."

They switched to happier conversational topics as they settled in to eat and watch the movie, and equilibrium was quickly restored. They sat together on the couch, his arm around her and her head on his shoulder, keeping up a sarcastic running commentary complete with overly-dramatic readings of the title cards.

He was having a really, really good time, which is why he should have realized that an interruption was inevitable. He winced as his pocket vibrated, and discreetly looked at the phone. _Damn._ "I'm going to have to cut this short." He held up the phone apologetically. "I have to go in to work."

She sat up. "Oh, what a pity," she said, disappointed.

"I'll get you a cab. I'm terribly sorry."

"It's quite all right. Really. But you have to promise to call me when you have time again, though - you owe me the second half of that movie."

"Count on it."

She smiled, and kissed him.

Twelve hours later found him in St. Petersburg, sorting out the new developments in Romanoff's arms-running investigation: former Soviet officers dealing in still-commissioned nuclear weaponry tended to grab and hold everyone's attention. The Black Widow had indicated at the blind drop that it was time to pick up the pace, but that the window for making significant changes to the timetable was closing quickly. He had no doubt about Natasha's assessment, none at all, but, given the nature and size of the case, it would be irresponsible not to review the facts in person first.

That, along with two other assignments, were the three largest items on his already over-filled plate. The Avengers Initiative was still his, though for the most part right now, that consisted of tracking Banner and Stark, and continuing the ongoing search for Steve Rogers. Steve Rogers was, of course, no more or less lost than he had been for the past sixty-seven years. Stark was actually harder to ignore than to keep track of, even if that new tower project of his kept him out of the supermarket tabloids. Banner was trickier - the undercities of India were more difficult to penetrate than the _favelas_ of Brazil, but not by much. The real challenge was proving to be waving off other interested parties. If Banner wanted to play Mother Theresa in the slums of Kolkata, that was his business, and more power to him - it was SHIELD's business to see to it that he could do so unmolested, at least until SHIELD had need of him.

It was the nature of his work, and he'd come to terms with it a long time ago.

The third was the PEGASUS project - the ongoing effort to tease out the secrets of the Tesseract. Out of the three, it was the situation in New Mexico that unnerved him the most (and if Stark ever found out that he was number two, Coulson was in a lot of trouble). Make no mistake: Fury's decision to work on weaponizing the Tesseract had caused a lot of controversy amongst those at SHIELD who had the appropriate clearance level to know about it. He couldn't say he liked it - jumping too far ahead technologically, without the necessary intervening steps, tended not to breed respect for what that technology could, but then again, he'd also had to face down a fifteen-foot-tall fire-breathing metal automaton in the desert. He wasn't sure what he could possibly have thrown at it that would have made a dent; he was all too aware that if Thor hadn't been able to stop it, things could have gone very badly. No, his disquiet started at the biweekly VTCs they held with the New Mexico site - he kept getting a creeping feeling that something wasn't quite right. He pored over the reports coming from PEGASUS, sending interrogatory e-mails to clarify any discrepancy or anything at all unusual (he was sure they were cursing his name), but couldn't quantify anything.

It didn't matter. He kept digging. After Budapest, he swore he'd never ignore that nagging little voice ever again.

It was over a week before he made it back to the home office in New York, and nearly two before he once again made it back to his apartment. As soon as he had a free moment, he called Alys who, to his surprise, gave no indication that she saw anything at all worth reproaching in his recent radio silence, and they set up a date to see the rest of "Metropolis."

Actually, they still missed the end of the movie, but this time it wasn't because he got called away.


	2. Chapter 2

In retrospect, he shouldn't have been surprised at how quickly it snowballed. She was simply very easy to spend time with, and he'd rarely met someone with whom he had so much in common - she was even enthusiastic at the prospect of wading through flea markets and obscure comic book stores on a Saturday morning, something he'd never encountered before. (They did have to develop a somewhat complicated system to equitably determine who got first dibs on any particular rarities they found, encompassing the variables of who saw it first, who picked the store, who had what in their respective collections and who got to buy the last real find they'd run across. Working out this system had involved a series of very enjoyable drawn-out arguments, prompting more than one store owner to ask how long they'd been married - a question which never failed to shut the both of them up.)

He couldn't tell her about SHIELD, but she talked about her work more than enough for both of them. Between the orchestra, her quartet gigs and her master classes, there was no shortage of material. Her professional life was so entirely fraught with drama. She was a member of a select coterie: a bunch of driven neurotics whose rampant personality issues would make them completely unemployable were it not for the fact that they were the best in the world at what they did.

It was a circumstance to which he could entirely relate.

And most of it, on the grand scheme of things, was fairly petty. Who was skipping rehearsal too often, why the conductor was an idiot, who the assistant concertmaster was sleeping with this week, the gory details of the latest teapot-tempest to convulse the prima-donna first violinists - it was better than reality television. Admittedly, he was rather forcibly reminded of how few friends he had outside of work - they always ended up mixing with her crowd, when they socialized with a group, but that had its entertainment value, too.

"I'm telling you, man, my brother lives in Santa Fe, and he swears on a stack: an alien attacked a small town in New Mexico six months ago and the government is totally covering it up!"

There was a chorus of groans around the table. Phil smiled inwardly. It was notoriously difficult to suppress an op if there were too many civilians involved, but if you could hand the story over to the right sort of people, no one would believe it anyway. It saved a lot of trouble in the long run.

"Oh please, Cassie, not this again," said Finn (first chair viola).

"Wake up, sheeple! There's a lot more going on than gets reported!"

"You know the kind of resources that kind of cover up would require? It doesn't make any sense," said Percy (tympani).

"It never makes any sense. Why would an advanced species travel millions of miles to terrorize someplace in the middle of nowhere?" asked Alys. "Why do these aliens always seem to want to visit New Mexico?"

"Maybe they like green chile," said Phil quietly. The rest of the table cracked up. Cassie fumed.

As they were headed back to her place in the taxi, he asked, "What was that woman's name? The conspiracy theorist?"

"Who, Cassandra? Yeah, sorry about that. She's nice, but certifiable. Whatever you do, don't get her started on the Tunguska blast, or you'll be trapped all night."

Actually, he was tempted to do just that, to see if she was right about that one, too.

Hah. Cassandra. That was pretty funny.

It was unfortunate, but that deception was simply part and parcel of what they did: when it came to a classified operation, the priorities were to limit the exposure, contain the damage, destroy the evidence, and, when all else failed, completely discredit the person leaking the information. That particular tactic was becoming less and less necessary these days - a peculiarity of disinformation campaigns in the age of the cell phone camera. Unlike a lot of the handlers, Coulson considered the phrase "pics or it didn't happen" to be his new best friend; just as crime procedural TV shows had given jury pools unreasonable ideas of what could be proven by forensic science, the constant presence of digital cameras had created the expectation that any extraordinary event would be documented by photographic evidence. A targeted EMP blast could take care of the problem, but lacked finesse - in its place, SHIELD's IT department had come up with a piece of software that erased any file created within a given timeframe on any phone that had used the transmission towers local to the event. And in a situation where those two options didn't do the trick (and the attempted application of a whole lot of money and a nondisclosure agreement failed), they could always fall back on the release of similar-but-obviously-faked photoshops. Honestly, everyone had gotten so good at looking for the con they were able to see a con where none existed.

The problem was that this state of affairs wasn't going to last forever. Eventually, it would reach a critical mass - something would happen that no amount of damage control could handle, and on that day, people would be terrified.

And that was the nub of the problem: scared people made stupid decisions. Scared people were demagogue fodder. The biggest lesson to take away from the bloody abattoir that was the 20th century was that a population in the grip of a terror (real or manufactured) was capable of anything, and would listen to anyone who could offer them any sense of security, however illusory, no matter what freedoms or ideals they had to throw away in the process.

This was the purpose behind the Avengers Initiative. If the universe started throwing aliens and mutants and mad scientists at you, well, then get your own team of aliens, mutants and mad scientists to throw right back at them. SHIELD, whatever their other faults might be, was racing to stay on top of the situation, hell-bent on having a solution before the problem went world-wide.

That was the theory, anyway. And there were still times at two in the morning when he stared at the ceiling and wondered when this had become his life.

"You got quiet – I hope you weren't _too_ scarred by the entertainment..."

"No, just a bit tired. Though I will admit the theremin solo was a bit much."

She ran a hand through her hair. "Oh _God_. See the problem with begging your friends to attend your recitals is that you have to reciprocate. And Sabrina's girlfriend? The composer? She's decided that tonality is a bourgeois affectation."

He grimaced. "And then complains about being surrounded by Philistines?"

"Interminably." She smiled, and slipped her hand into his. "Thank you for enduring it with me. It was above and beyond the call of duty."

"Do I get hazardous duty pay?" he deadpanned, running his fingers through hers.

"I'm sure we can work something out," she whispered in his ear.

He was open to suggestions, though, honestly, given that she was already enthusiastically planning their trip to CapCon? The occasional evening of avant-garde classical music was really a very small price to pay.

He spent the night, as he was starting to do more and more frequently. She fell asleep before he did, and he watched her for a little while. His mind turned to her paranoid friend. Sooner or later, Alys would start asking him questions he couldn't answer – it always happened; in fact, he was truly surprised it hadn't happened already - and he was finding that he really didn't enjoy lying to her. She'd been remarkably understanding but at some point, her forbearance would run out. He would do his duty: he always did, but that didn't mean he liked the prospect.

Still, there was not asking, and then there was drawing conclusions with the data available. The first time she'd seen him dressed to head out for work, he'd been treated to a rendition of "Secret Agent Man" (J. Rivers, arranged for strings and vocals by A. Simon).

He'd laughed it off. "Dinner tonight?"

"I can't. I have rehearsal. Sunday, perhaps?"

"You've got it."

As she warned him, when the orchestra's season started, her schedule filled up and it became tricky to find time when neither of them were working. He had absolutely no right to complain, he knew, not when she had accepted his frequent and irregular absences with such equanimity, but he was stunned at how quickly he had become addicted to her company, and how much he missed her when she wasn't there.

However, in truth, it was entirely possible that the whole thing might not have worked at all if it hadn't been for the fact that they were both equally willing to be flexible - if the only time they could possibly be together was to meet up for breakfast, then that's when they'd meet. If slow-motion conversations via text message were the best they could do, then their thumbs would get a workout. Once, they'd even had coffee at 3:00 in the morning, when she'd been on her way in and he'd been on his way out.

And, as corny as it sounded, it made what moments they could steal alone together all the sweeter.

Working for SHIELD was a notorious relationship-killer but (to his surprise) her punishing schedule was, in large part, self-inflicted, and he gently asked her about it.

"I lost a lot of time, and I'm trying to catch up."

"I don't understand."

"For a long time, I didn't perform. My ex had no problem with me taking lessons, though he thought I practiced too much, but he really hated the time that working with an ensemble took up."

"Why?

"He was aiming for the sort of career for which you need a decorative wife. And a wife who rarely had Friday and Saturday nights free simply wouldn't do."

'"I'm starting to dislike this guy."

She shook her head. "Don't. A lot of bad decisions went into making that debâcle. If his father hadn't been so overbearing, if he had had more of a spine, if I hadn't been so naive, if I'd listened to my friends and not my mother, if she hadn't been so keen on me marrying into that family - take your pick. It was what it was."

"You're awfully calm about it."

She sniggered. "That's because you're seeing me now and not me ten years ago. I've long since made my peace with it."

He let the subject drop. She didn't talk about her former marriage much, and when she did, she tended to speak of it with the same clinical dispassion as a pathologist reviewing an autopsy. She had apparently decided that being relentlessly even-handed about it was the correct way to handle the topic, and so, by God, relentlessly even-handed she would be.

Phil felt no such compunction.

Actually, that reticence also extended to her upbringing – except for her father, she didn't talk much about her family at all – but from what he'd been able to gather, her life before was very different than her life now. He'd discovered, for example, that making coffee and toast were pretty much the extent of her culinary abilities: when he'd teased her a little about having been married for over a decade without having learned so much as how to boil water, she'd just shrugged and said, "We had a cook," a statement for which he didn't have a good response. (Apart from offering to give her lessons. She took him up on it readily, and teaching her turned out to be more fun than he expected.)

Given what he'd been able to deduce, he began to wonder if she and Stark knew each other – she'd lived her entire life in Manhattan, and, at certain social strata, Manhattan was a very small town. He got an answer without having to bring the subject up himself, as it happened. They were passing the Stark Tower construction site, on their way to dinner, when she pointed out the window of the cab.

"God, have you seen the drawings of that building? They had a spread in the Times the other day - what an eyesore! If you ever wanted a clearer example that money can't buy taste..."

"It's supposed to be a revolution in clean energy technology – the first cost-efficient use of the arc reactor in a commercially-viable setting." As Stark was happy to tell people. Repeatedly. At length. Whether they wanted him to or not.

"And revolutionary clean-energy technology couldn't hire a decent architect?"

"Too much of a risk. A lot of architects wouldn't touch it – they didn't want their names anywhere near the project, in case it flops spectacularly."

She nodded, conceding his point. "You know, I met him, once."

"Tony Stark?" he asked blandly.

"Yes... well, 'met' might be putting it strongly. He crashed Margot Welland's coming-out party and threw up in the punch bowl. Poor Margot cried on my shoulder for days."

She caught his look of surprise, but evidently misinterpreted it, and continued. "We didn't mix, socially. You have to understand, my mother and grandmother were the most terrible snobs. The most they would ever concede was that the Starks were very clever _nouveaux_."

Again, coming from a small town where questions of old and new money took a back seat to questions of actually having some, it gave him a second's pause – but only a second. He wouldn't say he enjoyed running across people who weren't immediately impressed by the name of Tony Stark...

Oh, who was he kidding, he really did enjoy it.

Contrary to popular belief, he didn't actually hate Stark. Phil found him arrogant, immature, mercurial and absolutely infuriating, but hidden under all that (sometimes extremely well-hidden) was a good man, with the potential to be a great man. Stark's phone call from the governor, in the form of the new element for his arc reactor, had stopped his slide towards self-destruction, but it remained to be seen how long that pause would last.

Without external support, the man had all the stability of an upturned pyramid.

In theory, he was supposed to be having regular meetings with Stark to touch base, in keeping with Stark's position as a consultant to SHIELD. In practice, that usually meant having regular meetings with Pepper Potts, SI CEO and Official-Stark-Industries-Liaison-To-Anything-Tony-Didn't-Want-To-Deal-With. Not that he minded: he liked Pepper quite a bit. She was smart, incredibly competent, level-headed and eminently practical – she was far too good for Stark, in Coulson's opinion. Coulson fancied they were becoming friends.

"At any rate, the benefit is on Monday night, and you're welcome to come, if you like..." Pepper finished.

"I won't be able to, I'm afraid. I have a date."

Her face lit up with the matchmaking zeal of the happily-paired-off. "Do you? That's wonderful! Spill! I won't rest until I have all the details!"

He smiled. "She's a cellist. With the Empire Chamber orchestra."

"That's great! Where did you meet?"

"You're going to laugh."

"Oh, how can you say that? Of course I won't."

"You promise?"

"I promise, Phil."

"I met her at DiegoCon."

To Pepper's credit, she didn't laugh. She did take a sip of her water, though, a maneuver that was not lost on Phil. "So bring her with you on Monday! I can't wait to meet her!"

"Well... there's no delicate way to ask this, but will Stark be there?"

"Of course." She opened her mouth, then closed it again. "You've only been seeing her since May? Yeah, you're right, you'll probably want to wait a bit..."

Coulson lay face-down on his stomach, in a fuzzy state between waking and unconsciousness. It was generally considered to be no mean feat to render an agent of SHIELD incapable of voluntary movement, but Alys Simon had done it.

Apparently, as Phil had just discovered, the Secret to Happiness in this Universe was a girlfriend with really strong fingers. He would get up and shout that amazing revelation from the rooftops, just as soon as he could convince his bones and muscles to work together again. She had started at some point in the recent past with his head and neck, and would finish up sometime in the not-too-distant future with his feet. In the meantime, he was perfectly content to lay still and think of nothing, a tensionless puddle of kneaded flesh.

She got to his toes and stopped. He felt the bed shake as she climbed back up next to him. "Better?"

"Wstfgl."

She laughed and lay down beside him. With a superhuman effort, he rolled up onto his side, pulled her to him and curled his body around hers. They drowsed together for an indeterminate period of time, contented and at peace as the morning sunbeams crept across the bedspread.

Until, of course, the alarm went off. They both flinched.

"Is that yours or mine?"

"Mine." She slapped it off. "I've got call at 12:30. When does your flight leave?"

That's right - she was an extra musician at the NYC Opera today. "I have to be there at 2:00." New Mexico, again.

She pulled away from him slowly, and headed towards the bathroom.

"Don't use all the hot water." Admittedly, that was more of a problem at his place than hers. Alys Simon: inveterate stealer of blankets, user-up of the hot water, and how such a small woman managed to take up so much real estate in a king-sized bed was an ongoing mystery.

Just not one he wanted to solve anytime soon.

"You could come in here and make sure I don't," she replied.

"I would, but we both have places to be this afternoon."

"Spoilsport."

She did hurry through her shower, though, and he noticed she seemed a bit nervous as she was getting dressed. "Are you all right?" he asked.

"Yeah. I just promised I'd be there a little early today."

"Oh! In that case, I'll be done in a second -"

"Look, no, don't worry about it. This is for you," she held something out to him, and he took it. "If you want it, that is."

It was a door key, shiny and sharp-edged. He turned it over in his hand.

"You know, so you can take your time, so you don't have to rush out with me…" she said, blushing.

He smiled, a bit tongue-tied. "Thanks."

She returned the smile. "You're welcome."

There was an awkward pause as neither of them looked at each other. "I have to run," she said.

He pulled her to him and kissed her goodbye.

"Come to me as soon as you get in," she whispered in his ear, standing on tiptoe with her arms still around his neck. His blood began to heat, both from her words and the sensation.

"I might be pretty late," he murmured, his hands on her waist.

She shrugged. "Hence the key." He felt her cheek grow warm against his. "Only if you're up for it, obviously."

"I think that's pretty much a given," he said, gently kissing down the side of her neck.

She drew in a sharp breath. "Good." She stepped away, her face red. "But I really do have to go."

He suppressed a groan. "I know. Break a leg."

"And you have a safe trip."

They kissed again, and she left.

The problem was, of course, that hard-won experience had taught Fury to listen to Coulson's gut instinct, too. And when the New Mexico situation didn't improve to his liking, biweekly video teleconferences turned into bimonthly trips for him to the Land of Enchantment. Going down there only made the feeling worse - he toured the entirety of the PEGASUS compound every time, escorted and unescorted, and spent most of the time in the facility with every hair on the back of his neck standing straight on end. More than once, when passing a reflective surface, he'd whirled around, as if expecting to catch someone watching him.

He never did. He began to wonder if he was going mad.

The first few weeks after Puente Antiguo saw massive reorganizations within SHIELD to face this newly-rediscovered external threat. They were only sure of Asgard, of course, but during Foster's debriefing she'd mentioned that Thor had told her of at least seven other populated worlds. For his own part, after he'd gotten home, he'd thrown himself into the study of Norse mythology and culture, looking for any clues he could garner from the garbled, handed-down stories – a tactic that was deeply flawed, at best, but what other choice did they have?

He was beginning to curse oral tradition as a means of data preservation. Separating reality from fiction from metaphor was next to impossible. He'd even talked Freeman from linguistics into giving him lessons in Old Norse, to try to eliminate the translator's interpretation of the texts. He was getting to be pretty good at it, but really wasn't all that much closer to any reasonable course of action.

As a side note, Alys had noticed his newly-purchased library of Scandinavian literature, and had commented on it. He'd passed it off as a recently acquired hobby.

"Have you seen the new Ring Cycle at the Met? I haven't, though I want to... I mean, I've heard it a thousand times, but it doesn't really count if it's a CD, or if you're in the pit."

"Not yet – I'd like to, but it's a hell of a time commitment.."

She pulled a volume off the shelf. "It's funny, but do you ever wonder why anyone in these stories ever trusts the Aesir? All they ever seem to be doing is screwing people over and expecting Loki to fix it for them."

_That fact haunts my nightmares._ "Most ancient pantheons seem do to be staffed by overgrown children." Which was another recurring theme to his nightmare reel. All of it made the humanly-caused crises he had to face seem to be child's play.

And it really said something when the "child's play" aspect of his job involved rogue nuclear warheads. Another communique from Romanoff had him winging his way back to Eastern Europe directly from Roswell AFB.

SHIELD policy was very strict (and rightly so) about the use of personal electronics in the field. Commercially-available hardware could not possibly be considered secure, not by any stretch of the imagination, and anything that could be identified or traced was a liability when on a mission - this had never really been an issue for him before, but he was starting to find it a hardship. The safe house in Tblisi, however, had a secure internet connection, and he took advantage of it to check his off-duty e-mail.

His heart warmed to see two e-mails from Alys – he'd told her that he couldn't always reply, but that he enjoyed hearing from her, and so she kept up the correspondence. It was mostly chatter about the minutae of her daily life, but even updates on "As the Orchestra Turns" were like manna in the desert.

"...and you know how I adore subbing at the Met, but that damned set creaks! It all looks very impressive, and that spectacle is important for the opera, but why are we here if not for the music? It's absolutely maddening. At any rate, I must dash.

See you when you get home,

A."

He didn't even realize he was smiling until he looked up to see Romanoff's raised eyebrow. She gave him a speculative look. "So. How long have you been seeing her?"

There was a downside to working with the best spies in the world. "Five months."

She nodded, giving him a kind look. "You should wear that smile more often. It suits you."

"I thought love was for children."

Her lips twisted in harsh amusement. "You're twenty-five years younger than I am, Coulson. You _are_ a child."

She patted him on the shoulder as she headed to bed.

As promised, he let himself into her apartment as soon as he got in. Unfortunately, after twelve time zones in five days, he wasn't capable of anything more than passing out before his head hit the pillow.

He finally resurfaced hours later. He was still waking up in an empty bed - a note on the pillow next to his told him that she'd had to run to an early practice session, and to make himself at home - but the bed smelled of her. There was hot coffee in the kitchen, edible food in the fridge (he shuddered to think of the festering mess that his own would be: he hadn't expected to be gone so long) and, wonder of wonders, she'd gotten fresh doughnuts from the shop up the street.

He got himself some breakfast, and texted a greeting and an apology for being such bad company. The reply came almost immediately:

"Never been one for zombies, darling. You can make it up to me now that you've rejoined the living. :) "

He smiled, and checked the clock. Fury had banned him from SHIELD premises for at least twelve hours. He had time to relax a little, and get a copy of his own key made for her.

He could get used to this.

"Are you sure he's coming? How reliable is this guy?" asked Hawkeye. He and Romanoff were in St. Petersburg, walking along the banks of the Neva, waiting for a contact. Clint was not happy. He didn't like Russia much at the best of times, and not at all in the dark cold of an Arctic November.

"He'll be here."

"I'm freezing my ass off."

"Your blood has grown thin."

"Whatever. I haven't had enough vodka. My blood is still capable of freezing."

"Stop whining. You could have passed this up, you know."

"Yeah, but I missed your bubbly personality so much, I just couldn't stay away."

"More like Coulson asked you nicely."

Barton said nothing.

"You know he's seeing someone, right?"

Clint stopped and looked at her. "What?"

She nodded. "For about six months."

He turned away, and they started walking again. "Well. That's great. Good for him."

"He looks very happy."

"Wonderful. That's good. I'm happy he's happy. He deserves to be happy. So, you know, that's just fine. We're all happy."

Their footsteps crunched on the snow as they continued in silence for a little while.

"I told you repeatedly. If you wanted a chance there, you were going to have to make the first move. He's dense, when it comes to his own romantic life," she said.

"Oh come on."

"Everyone's got a blind spot, and that's his. How long has that girl in IT been mooning over him?"

A horrifying thought came to the fore. "Oh God! She finds out, and we're back in the regular tech support queue!"

"Probably."

Barton kicked at a pebble. "Swell. This just keeps getting better."

The fact that they'd traded keys hadn't helped at all with the temporal kleptomania. By midwinter, he also had half a closet and three dresser drawers at her place. It had never been explicitly agreed on - it had just sort of crept up on them in that eminently straightforward and logical way things seemed to around her. He wanted to spend time with her, she wanted to spend time with him, and this was the most efficient way to accomplish that.

And, as he discovered, they were well-suited. He'd caught flak from previous partners from his - well, he refused to call it "neat-freakery": he preferred "appreciation for a well-ordered living space," but it was an appreciation she shared. They'd already bonded over bad sci-fi and, as much as she might mutter about the "inexpressible vulgarity" of reality TV, and rail about the Decline of American Civilization, more often than not she ended up sitting on the couch right next to him. (A few times under the pretext that she had to box up new additions to her comic book collection – in mylar sleeves with alkali-buffered backer boards, put into acid-free longboxes while wearing gloves. He thoroughly approved. And it didn't hurt that there was enough overlap in the titles they both followed that they were able to share the copies purchased specifically for reading.)

He was a bit surprised at the amount of time she spent practicing outside of rehearsals and performances, but it made sense, once he gave it some thought. He had a lot of respect for all the sheer bloody-minded work that went into making something look so effortless. She never spent less than an hour in her practice room, and usually it was closer to four or five. And, if he had to be honest, listening to her rehearse wasn't exactly a hardship. He loved to watch her play at any time at all, but when she was practicing by herself, for herself - this was when she was the most beautiful, he decided. In all other situations, she had her ear to her fellow musicians, or her eye to the conductor, or was even just aware of her audience. Here, she held forth in her glory (even in yoga pants and a ratty t-shirt), coaxing beauty and emotion from catgut, horsehair and the printed page for no more reward than the sheer joy of it. Watching her made him long to wrap his arms around her waist and trail kisses up her spine, but if he did that, she would stop playing.

The music was a remarkable barometer of her mood, too - he was starting to categorize composers by her emotional state. And on the really bad days, well - he came in once as she was playing furiously on one of the lesser cellos, and he recognized the tune.

"Was that 'Enter Sandman?'"

"Yep. There's a cello quartet out of Helsinki that does metal covers." She raised an eyebrow. "I wouldn't've figured you for a Metallica fan."

"A guy I work with plays it a lot." True enough. "Are you all right?"

"It was a bad day," she answered.

That was an important indicator: more than fifteen minutes of heavy metal songs in a row meant that he should check to make sure they had chocolate on hand; more than half an hour and it was time to crack out the tonic water and gin.

And, a few weeks later, when he caught Phil tapping his foot along to "Harvester of Sorrow," Stark had given him the strangest look.

He was, dare he even think it and against all probability, happy with his personal life.

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

There really is a cello quartet out of Helsinki that does metal covers. They're named "Apocalyptica," and they are awesome. :)


	3. Chapter 3

The only problem with this oddly idyllic situation was that he was starting to wonder when the other shoe would drop. In Phillip J. Coulson's experience, his romantic relationships with otherwise-compatible people who weren't also members of SHIELD tended to collapse due to three factors, either singly or in combination: the need for secrecy, his complete incompetence when it came to talking about his emotional state, and his insane work schedule. (In the case of his romantic relationships with fellow members of SHIELD, it was those three with the added bonus of enemy fire, which is why he tended to look outside of the office for dates.)

The first, the fact that so much of his life was classified, was the least common of the destructive factors, but it was still statistically significant. When it came to that, she was good to her word: she really never asked about what he did. She wasn't stupid, not by any stretch of the imagination, and he could watch the questions form behind her eyes. She would trace his scars sometimes as they lay together, and he could see the effort it took for her to hold her tongue. "You have too many of these," was all she said, and he couldn't disagree.

She got close, once, after a very, very bad few days that involved a bungled operation gone so far south that SHIELD was completely disclaiming any and all knowledge. It wasn't one of his, thank God, but Delancey and Martinez had been killed - two good agents with whom he'd worked dozens of times. As was protocol in these situations, the family would be informed but no official notice would be taken of their passing.

She found him, still in his suit from work, sitting on her couch with a thousand-yard stare. She said nothing - she just sat down next to him, pulled his head into her lap and gently stroked his hair. After a time, she said softly, "You should have someone you can talk about these days with."

He took her hand. He kissed her palm and placed her hand on his chest, covering it with his own. "I do. There's a whole department. But this is better."

The second factor, still not that common but too frequent to be ascribed to chance, was more troublesome. He always felt that it was important to face one's own limitations, and so he knew and accepted from bitter experience that when it came to talking about his emotions, he was catastrophically bad at it. In any sentimental situation, not just romantic, but anything even remotely involving any feeling but anger, terrible things happened between his brain and his mouth. He tried to make up for it elsewhere – there were hundreds of ways of showing someone you lov- cared about them that didn't involve babbling like an idiot. If his partner brought up the subject, which had been his experience heretofore, then he could at least respond: he could usually manage three or four words without embarrassing himself, but any more than that and all bets were off. He could quote regulations at Asgardian killing machines, but telling a woman how he felt about her was really intimidating.

In this as well, it really seemed not to bother her. She was also not given to effusive behavior, except when it came to her music. She was affectionate and tactile – he had a great appreciation for her hands, and what she could do with them – but she never seemed to feel the need to verbalize her feelings. Not that he minded – he didn't especially miss comments like, "Tell me how much you love me," or the dread "Where is this relationship going?" conversation, but it came as a bit of a surprise.

But the absolute, number-one, kiss-of-death was the amount of time he spent in his office or on assignment. It wasn't just that the hours were insane – and they were – but that he tended not to get a lot of warning before he had to head out into the field. Technically, his was supposed to be a 40-hour-a-week position with a limited amount of out-of-town temporary-duty assignments (SHIELD HR frequently sent out irritating Powerpoint presentations about the need to maintain a good work/life balance, to general amusement) but their adversaries never seemed to get the memos. He couldn't blame his partners for getting frustrated.

And here he really was in uncharted waters. They had known each other less than a year, and he'd managed to be out of town and/or incommunicado for Christmas, New Year's, Valentine's Day and her birthday, and she hadn't even seemed annoyed by it. This was unprecedented. If he wasn't available, she made other plans. If he had to cancel, she expressed definite regret, but accepted it, and (more often than not) ended up doing whatever they'd planned to anyway, either by herself, or she'd invite a friend. He kept expecting her patience to run out, and worried the thought, poking at it like a canker sore to see when it would start hurting.

He made up his mind to ask her about it, and, on a rare Saturday afternoon that found them both free and at home, he'd decided to finally broach the subject. (They were curled up together on the couch at her place: he'd been watching "America's Got Talent" and she'd been pretending she wasn't.)

"Is everything all right?"

"Hm?"

"Is everything all right?"

"Well, except for the fact that you persist in filling up my DVR with the most god-awful trash…"

"No, seriously. I mean, between us."

She looked up at him, suddenly wary. "As far as I know. Why?"

"I just… I didn't know. If you were all right with the way things are." Part of his brain was watching this unfold with growing horror. And wondering where all the polysyllabic words ran away to.

She blinked. "Are we having the 'Where is this relationship going?' conversation?"

_Oh, dear God. _"Um. Do you want to be?"

"Are you unhappy with the status quo?"

She'd apparently decided to face the subject with frank, analytical questions. This seemed unfair, somehow. "No. No! Are you?"

"Were I unhappy, I would tell you." Her expression grew confused. "Have I given you that impression?"

"No. I thought… I've had to be away so much, and I don't know that that's going to get better anytime soon. I didn't know if that was bothering you."

"Well, naturally I'd rather you were here, but your job is your job, and even if you can't tell me about it, it's obvious how much it means to you. I don't want to jeopardize that."

"You really mean that."

"Of course I do, I just said it. The question really is what do _you_ want."

_Control of this conversation again._ "What do you mean?"

"I'm as devoted to my work as you are to yours. If you're looking for June Cleaver, 2.5 kids and a dog, then we'd probably better stop this right now because at this stage of the game, that's never going to be me. Is that going to be an issue?"

_Damn it. _He'd waded into this morass, now he was going to have to hack his way out of it. This was unbelievable. He had toppled governments, he'd killed men with his bare hands, he'd survived over a year as Tony Stark's handler, spoke eleven languages fluently and had now just forgotten every last damned one of them. Why was this so difficult?

"Oh, for goodness sake, you look like a deer in the headlights. You don't have to answer that now, if you don't want to." She took his hand. Her cheeks colored a little, and her voice got quiet. "I will say this: the status quo has made me very happy."

He looked down at her. She lowered her eyes, and blushed a little more. He squeezed her hand. "Me too."

"Well, that's good, then." She rested her head on his shoulder. He pressed a kiss to the top of her head, and sat there quietly for a little while. The tension slowly dissipated.

"Anyway, you did give me fair warning. You told me on our second date - you're married to your work."

He laughed. "I did, didn't I."

"I have no problem being your mistress." She gestured to the practice room, and her cellos. "And I can't imagine anyone I'd rather cheat on them with than you."

That was certainly the most unusual compliment he'd ever gotten, but he'd take it. "If you're my mistress, what does that make me?"

"My _cavalier servente."_

A married noblewoman's official lover. He rolled his eyes, and switched to Italian. "Leave it to the Italians. But I don't think I look the part."

"Surely that's for me to decide?" she replied, just as fluently. "Oh, and just so we're clear, I am your only mistress, right? I will accept that you are married to a large, faceless organization, but any other flesh-and-blood women and we're going to have a problem."

"That's a shame. It's going to be a real hassle, dumping the rest of them." he said dryly.

She elbowed him in the ribs, and got up to go to the kitchen. "I should make you sleep on the couch for a crack like that."

"And if you did, how would you keep an eye on me?"

"That's a good point. I suppose you can stay."

He smiled. He got up to get his laptop from the table. He was a bit taken aback when came out of the kitchen with a determined look in her eye.

"Phil?" Her cheeks started to color. "I... I..."

"What is it?" he asked, somewhat confused.

She turned even redder. "I... I meant what I said," she replied finally. "I am very happy with the way things are."

"I'm glad." He brushed his hand down the side of her neck, and she leaned into the touch. "I feel the same way."

Her eyes looked up into his, their expression illegible. Before he could say anything else, she pulled his mouth down to hers and kissed him, hungrily and with definite intent and snaked her other arm around his waist. He cupped her chin with both hands and deepened the kiss, smiling as he felt her hand untuck the back of his shirt. He had time to think, before the blood rushed completely away from his head, that maybe - just maybe - this time, things might work out.

Eventually, however, the other shoe did drop; just from a direction he hadn't expected.

He'd been away for five days, with Romanoff in Montenegro. (The fucking Balkans - nothing good ever happened to him in the Balkans.) After the debriefing and the paperwork, he went directly to her apartment. They greeted each other properly, but afterwards, when they were lying together, she took a deep breath. "Phil, there's something we need to talk about."

_Here we go._

She propped herself up on one elbow, and rested her hand on his bare chest. "A few months ago, Mariasol convinced me to throw my resumé in for this opening for a principal cellist. I figured, 'What the hell,' and did it, but they usually get on the order of several hundred resumés, so I wasn't expecting it to go anywhere. A month ago, I was invited to send an audition tape, and again I figured, 'What the hell. I can use the experience.' So I put a new one together - I think you were out of town that week, probably for the best, I wasn't a lot of fun to be around. Anyway, they called two days ago to tell me I'd made the semi-finals."

"Congratulations! That's wonderful news! Why is this bothering you?"

"It's in Oregon."

"Ah." He looked up at the ceiling, and tried to ignore the tight feeling in his chest.

"Phil, I'm going to take this seriously. It's barely believable they even gave my resume a second look, much less that they invited me to the live auditions. This is my chance to grab at the brass ring. It's the opportunity of a lifetime. And it really might not go anywhere. They'll pick three out of sixty, and there will be another audition after that to decide who gets the job. But I'm going to do my best, and if by some miracle I get it, I'm going to go. I can't pass it up. I needed you to know that, before I fly out to Portland in two weeks."

"Of course. I wouldn't dream of asking you to pass it up." He really wouldn't, but did it have to be on the other side of the continent?

"It's just… I mean…all this… Oh God." Her face flushed, and she buried her head in his chest. "Okay, so you can tell which bit of this I practiced."

He gave a half-hearted chuckle and reached out to touch the side of her face. She sat up again and made a fluttery gesture with her hand that could have encompassed them or the entire room. "All this… it's been really, really nice. And I don't want it to… to…"

The tightness vanished, and he broke out into a big smile. "Neither do I. If it comes to that, we'll make it work."

He could see the tension drain from her body. She kissed him wholeheartedly.

"There's a condition, though," he said, once they broke apart. She looked at him with a worried expression. "If you get it, and come back with a tote bag with a bird on it, wearing Birkenstocks? It's over."

She laughed. "No fear! It's the Sticks, I won't go native. Besides, I've probably completely jinxed it by telling you about it at all."

He would be too ashamed to ever admit it, but deep down, a small, selfish part of his heart really hoped she had.

She hadn't.

She texted him the instant she got the results, and he bought her flowers on his way home from work. Her euphoria was infectious; he was able to celebrate with her wholeheartedly despite the fact that his feelings on the matter were more mixed than he cared to admit. He was so pleased, so happy for her, and so proud, but that nagging part of his heart wouldn't let him forget that this brought her one gigantic step closer to leaving.

Her own good mood crashed pretty quickly in turn. The notification came with an enormous packet of sheet music that covered most of the dining room table when she laid it out.

"How much of this do you have to learn?" he asked.

"All of it," she replied, her hand rubbing the back of her neck. "Not the whole of each piece, just the highlighted parts. And I've played most of these before, but it's still pretty daunting."

However daunting it might be, she threw herself into it. She cut down all her other commitments to a bare minimum and concentrated wholly on preparing this music, practicing for hours and hours. Once, he'd even caught her practicing her fingering in her sleep. (On his forearm. It had hurt like hell, and left bruises. She was very apologetic.) This was not her usual diligence – she was crossing the line into obsessive behavior, and he began to worry.

It came to a head one night when he came back to her place, to find her exactly where he'd left her, in her windowless practice room and in a foul mood.

She looked up at him from where she was annotating the sheet music. "What kind of sadistic bastards assign the Prokofiev as an audition piece!? I ask you!"

"The kind of sadistic bastards you're trying to get a job with, it seems."

"Well, when you put it like that..." She crossed her arms and looked at him quizzically. "Are you home for lunch?"

"Lunch? It's seven o'clock in the evening."

Her eyebrows raised, and she glanced at her phone. "Ah. So it is. I lost track of time, I guess..."

"Apparently! Have you eaten today?"

She began to look abashed. "Coffee counts as a food group, right? Look, I'm not that hungry. Just fifteen more minutes and then - "

My God, how did he keep finding these people? "No. Get your coat. We're going out, and then we're going to my place. You need a break."

She griped a little as they headed to pick up some takeout, but stopped abruptly as soon as she smelled the food. They got settled in back at his apartment.

"Pick out a DVD," he told her, as he opened a bottle of wine.

He heard the strains of a very familiar theme song as he was walking out from the kitchen, and glanced over to the screen to see the title card for "Captain America Meets Pimpernel Smith" - one of her go-to comfort movies. Apparently, she was really troubled.

She waited for him to sit down, then nestled herself into his shoulder.

"Did you see that they're releasing a commemorative box set next year?" he asked

"I did. Are you going to get it?"

"I tell myself I'm not, that I've bought the set in too many formats already, but..."

"Yeah, I know. It'll be nice to have all the interviews and documentaries in one place, though."

The film was an old friend to them both, depicting Captain America and a direct descendant of the Scarlet Pimpernel liberating prison camps throughout Germany. It was a heroic tale of patriotism, derring-do, and really stellar wartime production values.

"It's the espionage scenes that get me. As if someone really thought it was believable that you could use Steve Rogers as an undercover asset," he commented.

"Right. 'Oh, it's just another six-foot-five blond guy with an incredibly broad chest. But see, he's got a fake-looking mustache, so that's totally not Captain America.'"

"Exactly." He thought for a second. "Paid close attention to the broad chest, did we?"

She rolled her eyes. "Oh, please. The handsome, chaste hero, who nobly, tragically sacrifices himself to save the world? Do you know what that does to a 14-year-old girl? I went as Peggy Carter to my friend's Halloween party that year."

He laughed. "Well, now I'm jealous."

"Oh, fear not. I'm not fourteen anymore. For one thing, chastity loses its appeal pretty quickly," she said archly. "For another, he's been dead for sixty-seven years, so I think you're safe."

The movie and their banter served well enough as a distraction for a while, but (at one of the quieter parts of the film) he noticed the line creep back into her brow, and heard her sigh.

"It's not like you, to overtrain like this," he murmured. "This has really gotten under your skin."

"It has," she replied.

"Why now?"

She sighed again. "This is going to seem so terribly irrational."

"Try me."

"It's just that up until now, it wasn't really real. It was just a lark, I didn't really have a chance, so I could just go for the experience and have a good time."

_Right. It was just a lark and a hallucination. So forget the whole thing and stay here in New York with me._ "And now?"

"And now that I'm at the final round, it's real and I've started to care. I've let myself want it. And a month from now, when I get the rejection notice, it's really going to hurt."

That was, of course, the problem. As much of a complication as her getting this job would be, he couldn't honestly say he would prefer it to the alternative. "Unwarranted pessimism is also not like you."

"Hardly unwarranted."

"Of course it is. How many hundreds of people did you beat to get this far?"

"I don't know."

"Yes, you do. How many applicants were there?"

"Three hundred and seventy-nine."

"Meaning you've already surpassed three hundred and seventy-six. Why do you doubt yourself?"

"The two left are almost certainly younger than I am, and with much more experience than I've got."

"All of which will mean nothing when you play better than they do at the audition."

"If I play better than they do at the audition."

"When. And as for their age, well, remember, youth and skill will always fall to old age and treachery."

She snorted. "I'm going to remind you that you said that, darling, when you turn fifty in two years."

"Go ahead. I speak from bitter experience." He looked down at her head on his chest, and ran his fingers along her jawline. "I know you can do this." And that was God's honest truth.

"And I wish it weren't so far away," she said, blushing.

"New York will always be here. Besides, if you're so sure you're not going to get the job, why do you care how far away it is?"

She glared up at him. "You're an unkind man, bringing in logic at a time like this."

"Well, someone's got to." He held her tighter. "You'll do well. I know you will. I have faith."

She hid her face in the crook of his neck. "You are so very good to me."

"It's no more than you deserve."

She made a noncommittal noise and wrapped her arms around him. They stayed that way until bedtime.

He had hoped to go with her to Portland for the audition, but the latest round of New Mexico meetings couldn't be rescheduled. He arranged for flowers to be sent to her hotel room, and called her whenever he could.

Which was, unfortunately, not often. He'd started to receive reports that Selvig's behavior was becoming erratic. His assistants had noticed that the good doctor's schedule had changed – that he was now prone to be up at all hours, and spent an inordinate amount of time just staring at the Tesseract. Coulson had ordered a round of psych evals for the scientific staff – that was easy enough to pass off as a routine precaution – but the results had been inconclusive. ("Inconclusive" was one way of putting it – the head psychiatrist's off-the-record response to Coulson's request was, "Their behavior is erratic? They're researchers. How can you tell?")

Coulson made a point of catching up with Selvig late one night, after discreetly arranging that the two of them would be alone and uninterrupted. It helped, of course, that he came bearing coffee.

"Oh, thank you, Agent Coulson. Just what I needed."

"You're quite welcome. I see you've been proceeding well, recently."

"Thank you, though we'd get more done if we didn't have quite so many reports to write."

"The perils of bureaucracy, I'm afraid," said Coulson.

"Like death, there's no escaping it." Selvig took a sip of his coffee. "This is such a revelatory project to work on, Agent Coulson. Again, I can't tell you how glad I am you people brought me in on this."

"Your stellar work made you the natural choice."

Selvig tilted his head to acknowledge the compliment, but the pun, to Coulson's mild disappointment, flew right over his head. Coulson began to ask him about the ongoing project, about their progress concentrating the Tesseract's power. It may have started as a reiteration of the most recent reports but Selvig, like all researchers, needed very little encouragement to keep right on talking.

"There's so much to study, and we're just scratching the surface! Take the designs we documented in the sand at the Bifrost site - in all three cases, after each transport, the patterns in the sand were exactly the same! And not just the same each time, but they were the same prime knot, a prime knot of incredible complexity! So what are we dealing with here? Is it transport by quantum entanglement? Have the Asgardians mastered the quantum computer? Is that why they need a power source of this magnitude? And what does that mean for the knotwork designs all throughout the British Isles and Scandinavia? Are they meaningful in this context, or are they cargo-cult copies, the scribblings of humans trying to ape their betters in the hope that they'll return their divine presence?"

"'Ape their betters,' Dr. Selvig? That's an extremely loaded phrase." Coulson turned his best bland stare directly at the man.

Selvig waved his hand dismissively. "It's just a figure of speech – forgive me, English is not my first language. But there's something here, something greater, and I feel like it's just within my grasp... the patterns are like those labyrinths in the ancient cathedrals – follow the path to reach Jerusalem."

Actually, the classic labyrinth was a straightforward pathway, not a maze or a knot, but this didn't seem to be the time to bring up that distinction. "Or to protect against supernatural enemies, from what I understand of some Scandinavian traditions?"

Selvig looked at him. "You are very well-informed, Agent Coulson."

"Donald Blake made us take a second look at an awful lot of things."

"Then something good, at least, is coming out of his blunder."

Coulson said nothing, but kept his eye on Selvig.

Selvig shook his head. "It's just the strangest feeling, to be this close. Like I have just a few more hurdles to leap and I then will find freedom..." He trailed off.

"Freedom?" Coulson raised an eyebrow.

Selvig snapped back to earth. "Freedom from this confusion." He stared into his coffee. "Or maybe I just need more sleep." He looked over to Coulson and smiled. "Good night, Agent Coulson."

"That's rarely a bad idea," the agent replied. "Good night, Dr. Selvig." Selvig nodded as he headed out the door.

Coulson looked over at the glowing cube, after the man had gone. _That was an unsettling conversation,_ he thought. He turned on his heel and headed back up to the office he'd staked out as his, and dialed Fury directly.

"I want Barton down here on surveillance as soon as it can be arranged."

"It's that bad?"

"Selvig's behavior is becoming a concern."

Phil flew back to New York late on the actual day of, and smiled at the text he received as he deplaned:

"It's done. _Alea iacta est_, and I refuse to worry about it any more."

He was, at least, able to meet her at the airport and bring her home. She didn't touch her cellos for two days – a record, in his experience – and by some miracle, no emergencies called him away, so they were able to enjoy a quiet weekend alone together. He relished every second of it – after all, who knew when they would get another?

* * *

Alys is complaining about Prokofiev's Sinfonia Concertante, Part 2, which really does look like it would be an awful thing to make someone do at an audition. :)

Also, "Pimpernel Smith" is a real WWII movie starring Leslie Howard, about a descendant of the Scarlet Pimpernel liberating prison camps in Germany. It was released in the US under the name, "Mister V." Sadly, neither version involves Captain America. :)


	4. Chapter 4

It was Fury that brought Coulson the news, on what turned out to be the best, most unbelievable day of his life.

As soon as the search team radioed in that they'd found the plane, Fury had ordered the Helicarrier north, and Coulson got himself on the very first flight to the base camp in Greenland. He'd harried the pilot and crew to get every ounce of speed out of the Quinjet, and, as a result, they were on-site before the excavation crew got their equipment unpacked.

He rappelled down into the flying wing (Schmidt's plane! This was really Schmidt's plane!) and joined the crew working to extract the frozen body from the ice.

There he was.

He'd tried to keep his hopes from getting up too high on the way over – thinking that there might have been a mistake, but no, there could be no mistaking that face, that uniform...

...that _shield_.

A few more steps, and he was standing at the side of Captain Steven Grant Rogers, United States Army, leader of the Howling Commandos, the world's first superhero, and an inspiration to millions - not just a great man, but the cause of greatness in other people. Coulson's heart leapt in his chest.

_We found him, Dad._

Coulson was so very glad for the balaclava he was wearing: it would have done enormous damage to his stoic reputation had anyone else been able to see his face right now. Once he was able to compose himself, he pulled down the mouth covering and took off the goggles. "Status report."

Agent Tadeshi came up to him. "Per Director Fury's orders, sir, we're cutting out the ice around him as well, and we'll ship him back to HQ in cold storage. Estimating another two to three hours before we have him completely free."

So that they could thaw him out under completely controlled conditions. Good. He was glad to see the recovery plans running smoothly. "Excellent. Keep me updated. And detail two agents to stand guard – at no point is he to be left alone."

"Sir?"

"An honor guard, Agent Tadeshi."

Tadeshi smiled, understanding. "Yes, sir. Right away."

Coulson nodded as Tadeshi hurried off, and, for as long as he possibly could, watched the workers cutting the ice away.

He couldn't _wait_ to tell Alys.

...

Gambling on duty was officially against SHIELD field regs, but the rule was very rarely enforced (as long as no one in the upper echelons was forced to notice it), and the bookmakers with the appropriate clearance levels would be busy tonight. Was he still alive? Would he wake up? When would he wake up? Coulson was having none of it. Obviously, he wanted to meet the man he'd idolized his whole life, but if that wasn't possible, bringing him home to rest in his native soil was the next best outcome.

What to do once they found Steve Rogers had been a favorite thought experiment for R&D for decades, and they'd written any number of contingency plans – Coulson had reviewed all of them, and authored more than a few of them - but, as everyone knows, no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy. As meticulously researched as they all had been, the closest they had to anything resembling a primary source were a couple of stolen, incomplete Soviet reports on the initial revival of the Winter Soldier, and those were less than illuminating. Nobody really knew what would happen next.

They flew Rogers back to New York, and put him, (still under guard) in one of the cold room labs until all the necessary experts could be brought to the facility. Coulson took advantage of the short break in the frenetic activity: he needed a couple of changes of clothing – he'd be staying at SHIELD HQ for at the very least the next few days – and though he could have more easily gotten them from his own apartment, he desperately wanted to see Alys. He made it to her place in record time.

She was there, for once. She came out of her practice room at his precipitous entrance, and squawked as he swept her into his arms and whirled around. "Good Lord! What's gotten into you?" she asked, laughing.

"You're not going to believe what happened! We -" he stopped short. Time froze, and his stomach turned as cold as the Arctic ice. "Oh my God!" It was classified! What the hell was he thinking!? Level Seven Classified, and he'd nearly blurted it right out! Good God, what was wrong with him?! He dropped his head to her shoulder.

"You can't tell me, can you." she said with a sympathetic smile.

"No!" he moaned into her neck.

"But it's good, I'm gathering?" She ran her hand through the hair on the back of his head.

He straightened up and looked down into her eyes. "Have you ever had a day that justified everything? Every sacrifice you've ever made, every hardship you've ever endured? That happened this week."

She looked up at him with shining eyes and a delighted smile on her face. "That good?"

He nodded. "It's wonderful."

"Well, then, congratulations to you on your Unnameable Triumph." She kissed him. He wrapped his arms around her, and they held each other tightly.

"'Unnameable Triumph.' God, Alys, I swear to you, if I could talk about it, I would."

"I know you would. It's all right." She kissed his cheek. "I'm happy for you, Phil. Should we go out to celebrate?"

"I can't right now. I have to get back. Soon, though, I promise."

"Absolutely." She helped him pack a bag, and he rushed back to SHIELD.

...

They watched over the medbay in shifts. Coulson could barely believe it, no matter how long he stared at the body on the gurney and, when Fury woke him up to tell him there were signs of life, he'd been rendered speechless.

"You ok, Coulson? You going to faint on me, here?" teased Fury as he headed in to brief the Council on the latest developments.

He just damn well might.

Coulson rushed down to the lab to hear what the doctors had to say. They were hedging quite a bit, as fit the situation, but their assessments were generally optimistic. "The Serum is working to fix what little damage was done by the frost. Now, let me reemphasize the preliminary nature of this, but if the repair trends continue as they have been, he should regain consciousness sometime in the next two to three weeks," said Dr. Horowitz, SHIELD's cryogenics specialist.

"Will there be brain damage?"

"Again, it's way too early to tell, but at this point, I would hazard a guess that there will not."

The elevator door opened, and Fury stalked out. "Keep us informed, Doctor. Coulson, with me," said Fury, beckoning the agent to his office. Coulson followed.

"Sit down."

Coulson complied, suddenly wary. This was never a good beginning.

Fury templed his fingers and eyed Coulson. He sighed. "They want to bring in their own expert for Rogers' resuscitation."

"What?"

"He'll be here in two hours, and we're to provide all possible cooperation. Here are his requirements, and an overview of his general plan." Fury handed a tablet over to Coulson.

A wave of sickening disappointment washed through him. "May I ask why I'm being pulled off this?"

"They feel that you're too close, that your first loyalty will be to Captain Rogers and not to SHIELD."

"How is it that they expect him to trust us if he believes its the other way around?"

"Believe me when I say this was an argument I had with them. An argument I lost."

Coulson swallowed hard. "And what is my role to be, in this project?"

"The want you to upgrade the uniform."

"The uniform." This wasn't happening. Coulson bit down on the angry words that fought to come out of his mouth. "I see. I'll get it done. Thank you, sir," he replied, in a tone that obviously meant no such thing. He stood up and headed for the door.

Fury pinched the bridge of his nose. "Phil, just start reading it. It'll save you the trip of running back here to yell at me some more."

Still seething, Coulson raised an eyebrow and started to skim through the files. His jaw dropped. "You have _got_ to be fucking _kidding me._"

"I know."

"This is ridiculous! This is never going to work – hell, this is going to do more harm than good!"

"Their man feels that this would be the easiest way to break it to him."

"There is no easy way to break this to him! And a pathetic charade of a reenactment isn't going to help!"

"I know."

"Look, let me talk to their 'expert' when he gets here. He can have the credit, for all I care, but -"

"Phil, I'm sorry, I really am, but I need to pick my battles. I can't win this one, so I'm going to keep my powder dry."

"This is going to fail."

"Your opinion has been noted. Do I need to make this an order?"

Coulson hissed an indrawn breath. "No. Sir. You do not." He turned on his heel and stalked out of Fury's office in a quiet rage that radiated out from him like a force field, causing underlings to scatter before him like a herd of gazelles at the appearance of a predator.

"Ok, get all the shit done, get it done now, and get ahead on the rest of the work. And tell Watkins that if he so much as thinks of launching Galaga, I'll beat the crap out of him myself," whispered Mullaney to the agent at the workstation next to him.

"Being a bit paranoid, aren't you?" replied Cho, without moving her lips.

Mullaney shook his head. "When elephants fight, it's the grass that suffers."

...

This was wrong. This couldn't be more wrong. Steve Rogers was a brilliant man – had always been a brilliant man, the Serum hadn't altered that aspect of him at all – and he'd see through this like tissue paper. The very last thing they should try to do would be to fake anything in any way. The reality of Rogers' situation would be too overwhelming as it was: the man needed to believe that everything they were telling him was the absolute truth.

Rereading through the rest of the WSC's plan only made things worse. They wanted to confine Rogers to SHIELD HQ or the Helicarrier and limit his contacts to the outside world, "for his own good." They weren't even planning to fight the DoD to get all the back pay Rogers was entitled to. Every step of this seemed designed to make the man dependent on SHIELD - Coulson could not imagine a worse way of going about gaining the Captain's loyalty. And, once that loyalty was lost, did they honestly think they'd have a chance in hell of making the Super Soldier do anything or stay anywhere he didn't want to?

This was ludicrous.

He read through it once more. There wasn't even a plan B! Was this amateur hour? He'd have the job of any subordinate of his who presented him with an action plan like this! It was going to fail and then they'd be scrambling to...

He stopped, and took a mental step back. He stared at the tablet for a time, tapping his fingers on the table.

This would fail.

This would fail badly.

This would fail badly and the gormless idiot who wrote it hadn't written in any contingency plans.

Meaning that, when this did fail, as badly as it was going to, they were going to be scrambling to come up with a plan of action.

Unless, of course, someone had one all ready written, and all ready to go...

He knocked on Sitwell's office door. "Come!"

Coulson walked in and closed the door behind him. "I need you to take a look at this." He offered the tablet as he sat down.

Sitwell took it. "This is their plan for Rogers? Yeah, they were all saying you came out of that meeting looking like you were ready to kill someone. Actually, could you do that more often? Because I swear, the grunts have gotten more done in the last hour than they have..." He looked up at Coulson. "_This_ is their plan? Is this a joke?"

"Keep going."

Sitwell complied. He rolled his eyes. A lot. "Oh, _hell_ no. Here in New York? Why not on neutral ground? What are they thinking?"

"Keep going."

Sitwell swiped his finger along the tablet screen, and then swiped it again, like he was expecting the screen to scroll further. "Where's the rest of it?"

"That's it."

"You're kidding me. This is what they want to run with?"

"They've given the Director his marching orders. But, naturally, in the interests of being prepared, we should have something in place in the event this doesn't play out, don't you think?"

Sitwell's mouth formed a slow smile. "Just in case, oh, absolutely. As an academic exercise."

"Precisely." Coulson nodded. "I need you to take point on this."

"Why me?"

"The Council doubts my objectivity." Sitwell snorted at that, but Coulson shrugged. "There will be a lot less resistance to any deviation from the their plan if I'm not seen to be involved. I'll stick with what they've assigned me, and nominally report to you."

"_You'll_ be reporting to _me_? Does this mean I get to make you bring me coffee?" Sitwell grinned.

"Don't push your luck."

"A man's gotta try." Sitwell nodded at the tablet. "It's bullshit that it has to come to this, but I'm in. What's the play?"

The play was a modified version of one of Coulson's original resuscitation plans. He and Sitwell went over it – it would take quite a bit of setup (it was just astonishing how something effective would take a great deal more time and effort), so they divided the tasks between them, and set to work.

...

The legal department was Coulson's first stop: Captain Rogers' status with the Army would determine a great deal of how they would proceed. He took the casefile to their most vicious barracuda – their lawyers had to wrangle the multijurisdictional imbroglios that came with SHIELD's less successfully covert activities, so SHIELD had made a habit of hiring any lawyer that beat them too egregiously. The results were astonishing. It was said that even Nick Fury was scared of SHIELD's legal department.

(Coulson knew this not to be true. Nick Fury wasn't scared, he was _terrified_ of SHIELD's legal department. Legal's budget was inviolate.)

"They're only trying to claim pay for the duration plus six months? That's _insane._ He was MIA, he's owed much more than that!" exclaimed McCarty.

"So there is precedent on his side?"

"My God, _all_ the precedent is on his side. Bell alone would be enough -" He caught Coulson's inquiring look, and explained. "Otho G. Bell et al. vs. United States. Out of all the US soldiers captured during the active years of the Korean war, a small group of them defected to the enemy and refused repatriation during the mass POW exchanges in 1953. They were all formally discharged in 1954. A couple of years after the war, they re-defected, returned to the US and sued for their back pay from their initial dates of capture to the dates of their formal discharges. And eventually won! And they weren't just resisting insufficiently, they were doing propaganda work for the enemy! If they're eligible, surely Captain Rogers is! This is ludicrous!"

"Can you give me an estimated timeframe?"

He shook his head. "Not an accurate one, I'm afraid. The DoD is glacial at the best of times, and, these days, they're pinching their pennies. It's going to take a while."

"But you can do this?"

"Are you kidding? Not only can I do this, Agent Coulson, but this is going to be _fun_."

Coulson nodded, amused. "Start prepping what you need, but wait for my word before you file anything."

"Yes, sir."

Next was a stop at Psych – apart from Internal Affairs, the least popular division in all of SHIELD. SHIELD tended not to look for ordinary skill sets when hiring, and while there might not actually be a causal relationship between exceptional abilities and mental health issues, there was a definite correlation. The Psychiatric Department also had SHIELD's highest turnover rate, despite their top-notch compensation packages. In this respect, Coulson was no different than his coworkers, and a bit of a hypocrite: he would lecture his subordinates on the importance of attending their mandatory after-action therapeutic sessions, but the fact that he dodged his own appointments as assiduously as his underlings did was information only available to his superiors.

God bless HIPAA.

Nevertheless, there were some doctors he was more inclined to work with than others, and Dr. Anne Jepsen was one of them.

"I wanted to ask: would you consider taking on Captain Rogers as a patient?"

She shot him a surprised look. "I thought the WSC was running that show."

"They are. This is, at this point, strictly hypothetical."

Her face took on a bland expression. "In the hypothetical? Of course I would. But you understand I 'hypothetically' wouldn't treat him any differently than I would my regular patients – I would give you my recommendations, but I wouldn't break confidentiality."

"I'm counting on that, Doctor." He quirked a half-smile. "In the hypothetical, of course."

"Uh-huh. Let me know when you 'hypothetically' need me to start."

And after that, it was housing, and after that, security, and so on and so forth and onward - there was no way to accurately predict when Rogers would wake up, so it all had to be set up and ready to go as soon as humanly possible, and the days started to blend together. Not for the first time, sadly, Coulson was running on caffeine, commissary food and what sleep he could snatch on the sofa in his office.

It was in the midst of this chaos that he got a text from Alys:

"When you get a chance, I need to talk to you."

It took his mind a second to switch gears. If she was being that direct, then something was up, and he had a pretty good idea what it was. It just remained to be seen whether it was good news or bad news.

And, honestly, he wasn't really sure which was which.

He looked over his schedule again, and, once he'd managed to squeeze out a free half-hour, texted her back a where and when.

...

"Where" was the coffee shop a couple of blocks down from the main SHIELD office – they'd met up there many times before when time had been short. She was already waiting at their regular table in the back, and had ordered them both coffee. She waved him over. He kissed her cheek and squeezed her hand – neither of them could abide public displays of affection – and, after he sat down, she merely said, "I got word." She held a letter out to him. He took it and read, "Dear Ms. Simon, We are pleased to be able to offer you…"

_This is the part where you have to smile._ "I never had any doubt at all. Congratulations, Alys." _I thought she'd look happier._ He re-folded the letter and handed it back to her.

"Thank you," she said tonelessly. "Between this and your Unnameable Triumph, we've both had a pretty good couple of weeks."

"We have," he replied. Except for the fact that it really, really didn't feel like it. "When do you need to be there?"

"In six weeks."

"That's not a lot of time."

"No."

"Are you going to sublet?"

"No. The market's recovered enough, I'm going to sell. I have a meeting with the real estate agent this afternoon."

"You should stay at my place, once you put yours on the market. It'll make things easier." _And maybe I'll have a snowball's chance in hell of actually seeing you before you go._

"It will. Thank you. I appreciate it." She toyed with her coffee cup. "Phil, come with me to Portland," she blurted out. He looked up at her, surprised, and she amended, "To help me pick out an apartment. I'm flying out on Monday. Come with me. It'll be fun."

"I can't."

She nodded, her face blank.

"I swear to you, Alys, someday I'll be able to explain all this, and you'll understand."

"I believe you. I trust you." She started to turn pink. "Phil, I l-"

*BZZZZT* The message alert on the SHIELD cell phone interrupted her. He fought the burning urge to pick up a rock and smash the thing to pieces. He looked at the screen. No, really, a rock was too good for it. He was going to go get some thermite from the weapons locker, take it out to the range and -

"Your wife is very demanding," she said softly.

"So are yours," he quietly snapped back.

She didn't argue. "I know."

"I have to go."

She nodded. He stood up, leaned over and kissed her cheek again. "Goodbye. Call me when you get back."

"I will," she said.

He left.

Neither Alys nor Phil noticed, but the old, white-haired man sitting next to them had been watching this quietly dramatic scene go down, and had rolled his eyes several times behind his darkened glasses. Kids today! Couldn't pour water out of a boot if there were instructions printed on the heel! He discreetly looked over at the woman as she sat watching the black-clad man hurry off. He thought about saying something to her, but before he could, he heard her speak:

"Phil, I love you," she said, and then put her face in her hands. "Christ _JESUS_ I am such a fucking idiot." She snatched up her purse and stormed out.

The old man shrugged. Honestly, it was a wonder the species perpetuated itself at all.

...

He got back in time to put out the latest fire. Stanley Harris, the WSC's chosen man, was rubbing just about everyone the wrong way, and keeping the peace had somehow fallen to Coulson's lot. _The worst jobs usually do,_ he thought bitterly. Did the man not realize he was pissing off an entire building of extremely lethal people?

He slumped down on the sofa in his office and pinched the bridge of his nose. It's not like she was leaving him, she was just... leaving New York. Which had him in it, unfortunately, and would, for the forseeable future. He pulled out his personal phone. He should text her... something. He'd been brusque. He was happy for her, he really was. He wanted her to have this. He just couldn't think of anything to say that he thought she'd want to hear, anything that didn't sound ridiculous when he tried to put it into words.

He put the phone back in his pocket, and rubbed his face with his hands.

Honestly, he'd had better weeks. He'd had worse weeks, too, but at least, during most of those, he'd been able to return fire. Everything just seemed to be twisting the wrong way right now.

He took a deep breath and straightened up. He'd deal with all of this later. He'd hate it all later. Right now, he had a job to do.

Several jobs, in fact.

He headed down to R&D to work with them on the Captain's new uniform. The old one was in tatters (another casualty of the long-term exposure) and had been cut off him when they'd transferred his body to medical. The meeting was a long one – discussions of how modern to make the design (not very), and how armored it should be (as much as possible while still allowing movement – cost no object, so the techs were drooling at a chance to show off), but it was entirely unanimous that the shield needed no updating at all. He dismissed the team to their tasks.

The shield had been left on the table; he walked over and picked it up. It was, not surprisingly, lighter than he expected. He examined it closely – they'd have to have the paint redone, certainly. Captain America might have gone through seventy years in the ice unscathed, but the straps and the guige on the shield sure hadn't – the leather was cracked and brittle. He'd have them replaced with kevlar strapping that would answer much better; they could always change it back if Captain Rogers didn't like it. He'd bring it to the uniform crew to get the leather swapped out.

The impulse to put it on his arm struck him like a tidal wave.

No. He wasn't going to do that. It was silly, and juvenile, and hadn't he just gotten into enough trouble for being a fanboy?

He started to set the thing down, but couldn't quite manage it. _It's Captain America's shield! My God, I'm holding Captain America's shield!_

He glanced over at the mirrored wall of the conference room, and then again to the shield. His resolve wavered. He glanced to the door – it was shut, and there wasn't anyone else around, and he could always erase the surveillance recordings.

_To hell with it._ He slipped his arm carefully through the fragile leather, hefted the shield into position and turned to see his reflection. The red, white and blue metal shone brightly against the dark black wool of his suit. _Oh, fuck yes. _He fought the smile, but the smile won. He allowed himself a long moment to drink in the sight. For a minute, he thought about taking a picture, but it wasn't like he was ever going to forget this moment, and the one person he would want to show it to wasn't cleared to see it anyway.

He eventually did manage to take the shield off his arm and get back to work, but that mental image went a long way towards making him feel a bit better.

...

Alys got back into New York a little over a week later, lease in hand. She'd signed an agreement for a three-bedroom apartment near the symphony's rehearsal space – three bedrooms struck him as a lot of space for one person, but Portland rents were so phenomenally low when compared to Manhattan that he wasn't that surprised. (She'd texted him the address while she was still in Oregon. He'd looked up the crime statistics: it was a reasonably safe neighborhood, but he still wondered if she would let him upgrade the security system.)

He managed to arrange for the night off. (After repeated reassurances from the doctors that Rogers was unlikely to awaken and after working for two days straight to get his schedule cleared before she got back. He thought he was going to have bribe Sitwell to hold down the fort alone for the night, but Sitwell had just looked at him over top of his glasses and said, "Jesus God, Coulson, if anyone in this building needs to get laid, it's you. Go on, get out, and good luck.") It wasn't nearly as much time as he would have liked, but it was enough for dinner, and to get her settled in at his place. She told him about meeting some of her new coworkers, the sights she'd seen, the lousy weather, and they both ignored the enormous elephant in the room.

They spooned together that night, afterwards, skin-to-skin, as if even pyjamas were too much of a separation. Without even thinking, he blurted out, "What would it take to get you to stay here in New York?"

She stiffened in his arms. "What would it take to get you to come with me to Portland?"

He sighed and rested his forehead on the nape of her neck. After a beat, she rolled over and pulled his hands to her hips. "The Philharmonic offers me a job, and I'll be on the next plane. I don't plan on being there forever." She placed her hands on his chest. "My home is here."

He smiled. "You can take the woman out of New York..."

Her expression turned unreadable for just a second, but she then smiled back. "Just so."

...

The doctors called them all to the observation bay as soon as Rogers' brainwave activity seemed to indicate that he was returning to consciousness, about twelve days after he'd first started showing signs of life.

"This is a mistake," whispered Coulson to Fury.

"Really, Coulson?" Fury whispered back. "You think so? Because I completely didn't understand that the first thousand times you told me. Now it's really beginning to sink in."

"Sitwell's going to want to talk to you about this afterwards."

"Is he."

"Yes, sir." Coulson returned the stare blandly.

"I look forward to it.

"Sir? He's coming out of REM sleep," said Horowitz.

"Make sure Agent Carter is at the ready," said Harris.

On the bed, Steve Rogers opened his eyes.

Despite everything, Coulson broke out into a big smile. _I'll be damned._

And then it all went horribly wrong.


	5. Chapter 5

It should be noted that a chunk of this was written before the DVD came out, so I remembered a piece of dialogue from the movie incorrectly. It's not radical, but it does change the nuances somewhat. I've included that bit of dialogue as I remembered it, not as it actually was.

Also, the views expressed by the characters in this fic are wholly their own and not the author's. The Author would like to apologize to the residents of any major metropolitan centers who might feel slighted by the views expressed in this fic. :)

* * *

"Where am I?" asked Steve Rogers.

"You're in a recovery room in New York City," replied Sharon Carter.

"Where am I really?" he glared.

"I'm afraid I don't understand..." she hedged.

"The game. It's from May, 1941. I know because I was there." Rogers advanced on her menacingly. "Now I'm going to ask you again: where am I?"

Coulson glanced at his watch. It took Captain Rogers less than two minutes to see through the ruse. Sitwell owed him a hundred bucks.

….

As an agitated Steve Rogers made his bid for freedom, and Fury took off for the door to talk Cap down, Coulson rushed to his office. Sitwell met him there, and they went over the details one more time before Sitwell ran off to catch up with Harris and Fury. Coulson headed to Medical Security to discreetly observe Rogers' initial treatment and testing. Given the situation with the Council, he wanted to maintain the lowest of low profiles, but he'd intervene if he had to.

Fury swept into the Medbay, shepherding in their new star patient, with Harris tagging behind. The staff had all been briefed, but even that couldn't keep anyone from staring. It's not like Coulson could blame them. Captain America had just walked into the room, larger than life. Coulson had always imagined seeing him in person – brave and tall and strong.

But not terrified. Never terrified. And the man was obviously panicking,

"Doctor, I need to get out of here. I've spent enough time in hospitals for one lifetime," said Rogers.

"For the time being, Captain, we're going to need you to stay in quarantine. The world has changed quite a bit since you were last awake," replied Harris.

"Quarantine?"

"For the general public's protection." Fury interjected. "Everyone working here has been inoculated against everything imaginable and we've got the best decontamination systems on the planet, but we don't know what caught a ride with you into the ice and we can't risk anything getting out. The last thing we need is a new outbreak of smallpox or the Spanish Flu – people don't have the same immunities they used to."

Steve nodded slowly. "I... I didn't think of that. Yes, sir. I understand. I just... I want to go home," he said.

"All in good time, Captain," answered Harris. "For now, come this way..."

….

Sitwell joined Coulson at his post behind the one-way glass to watch as the doctors started the examination.

"He's got no memories at all since he went into the ice?" asked Coulson.

"Nope, nothing."

"I'm not sure whether that's a mercy or not."

"He keeps going on about his date with Agent Carter," said Sitwell. You didn't have to be a Captain America nerd to know that story – every documentary and biopic ever made had included that scene.

"A date they made less than two hours ago, from his point of view. And, as far as he's concerned, Bucky Barnes died last week. Don't let anyone forget that."

Sitwell nodded. "You should be running this."

"I had a longer talk with Fury yesterday – there will be problems if I get anywhere near it. Turns out that this is retribution."

"Retribution? For what?"

"They figured out who sent Stark to Ross to get Blonsky." None of them had wanted Blonsky (aka The Abomination) on the Avengers roster, but the WSC had disagreed, and had ordered SHIELD to send a liaison to talk General Ross – Blonsky's keeper – into securing his cooperation. Coulson had given the job to Tony Stark, counting on Stark to aggravate the General to the point that SHIELD would never be allowed within ten miles of Blonsky ever again.

Stark surpassed all expectations.

"They're still pissed about that? Shit. Fuckers never let go of a grudge," said Sitwell.

"If this is the cost of not having to work with Blonsky, then -" He tried to say, "Then I'm all right with it," but his tongue tripped on the magnitude of the lie. "Then I am resigned to it."

"Did you practice saying that in front of the mirror?"

Coulson shrugged. "It doesn't matter. Let's just get this done right." He pointed as Fury and Harris turned to leave Medical. "Get going. You've got an appointment with the Director."

Sitwell nodded and headed for the elevator.

"I think it's fairly clear, Director, that this has been a disaster," said Sitwell.

Fury raised an eyebrow and templed his fingers, staring impassively at the two men across his desk. Before he could make a reply, however, Dr. Evan Harris cut in. "Oh, that's a blatant overreaction! The subject is simply in shock. We need to keep him here, in a controlled environment, where he can be monitored."

Sitwell rolled his eyes. "No. It's too late for that. You had your chance to start him out in a controlled environment, and you blew it! Now we need to do damage control."

"We need more time. That's all," said Harris.

"Time which will do nothing to help Rogers' stability, and give him even less reason to trust us in the long run."

"With proper treatment, I'm confident that we can make the subject understand the necessity of our actions!"

"I'm almost afraid to ask what constitutes 'proper treatment' in your mind..." snarked Sitwell.

"Enough," said Fury, with quiet menace. The men ceased arguing. "What are your suggestions, Agent Sitwell?"

"Once medical has cleared him, make his care strictly outpatient."

Harris burst out. "How can you possibly think –" Fury held up his hand, and the doctor stopped.

"Look, we'll get the DoD to cough up everything he's owed, but that's going to take time. For now, put him on the payroll – make him another consultant. Get him an apartment, give him a living allowance, and make it conditional on him seeing one of the regular psychiatric staff on a daily basis. Offer any other support he could possibly want: briefings on the last seventy years, physical training, medical services, you name it, but let him choose."

"And what on Earth makes you think he won't run for the hills? How do you propose we keep track of him?" scoffed Harris.

"We've kept close tabs on Banner, and Banner has friends, resources and a complete understanding of how the 21st century works," said Sitwell. "I'm not saying that this is an ideal scenario – hell, this is the polar opposite of the ideal scenario – but it's the only realistic way forward from this point."

"Banner is not of any use to us! You're talking about taking the chance of losing an incredibly valuable asset!"

Fury slowly turned his head to face Harris. In lethally icy tones, he replied, "He's a man, Doctor, not an asset. I suggest you remember that."

"Let him out, Director," said Sitwell.

Fury shifted in his chair. "Dr. Harris?"

"Yes?"

"Thank you, but your services will no longer be required. Agent Sitwell will be handling this from here on out."

"I am here on the highest authority, Director, and I have barely had time to work. My plan has been reviewed at the highest levels. If you throw me over like this, there will be repercussions!"

"I imagine there will. Now get out."

Harris stalked out the door.

Fury eyed Sitwell. "Well? What have you got for me?"

"Funny you should mention." He opened his briefcase and pulled out a folder. "Actually, I have all the paperwork ready to go. Just needs your signature. Well, multiple signatures."

Fury looked over the forms and pursed his lips to hide a smile. "Why, this is amazing, Agent Sitwell. Your handwriting has certainly improved."

"Been taking lessons from Agent Coulson, sir."

"I can see that." He tapped the folder on the table. "You've got your work cut out for you. Get on it." Sitwell nodded and headed for the door. "And, Agent Sitwell?"

"Yes?"

"Good work. To both of you."

"Thank you, sir." Sitwell hurried off.

Now they just had to set everything in motion.

Mariasol Trujillo had serious misgivings about her dearest friend's lover.

She'd gone out with the two of them a number of times, and he'd seemed nice enough – bland and affable. (Mariasol knew right away that that was a mask: he couldn't possibly be as bland as he appeared, or he would never have kept Alys' attention.) He just didn't strike her as the sort of man that would frequent a massive comic book convention. Alys, at first, was treating this as she ought – something casual with a kindred spirit, the rare bit of fun who could put up with both her cellos and her comic book habit – but it got awfully serious awfully quickly. To be sure, Mariasol would have probably approved of him wholeheartedly had anything else about the man had come across as even remotely normal. Alys had admitted that she'd met absolutely none of Phil's friends, family or coworkers. The man had no Internet presence at all, none whatsoever: Internet searches on "Philip Coulson" brought up a photographer in England, a preacher in Mumbai and a deceased New Zealand horse-race driver. The man said he worked for SHIELD? The only time Mariasol ever heard anyone talk about SHIELD was when Cassie was off on a rant about killer robots from outer space and rampaging gamma radiation monsters. She hadn't even been sure that the agency wasn't a product of Cassie's fevered imagination until she'd finally found a link to their webpage. (Not through a search engine – she'd only found it after burrowing through Homeland Security's sub-pages.) Mariasol didn't get a creepy serial-killer vibe from Phil, but then, if creepy serial-killers gave off a creepy serial-killer vibe, they wouldn't be very successful with the serial-killing, now would they? As it became clear that this was turning into something very serious indeed, Mariasol began to make her worries known.

The two of them had a titanic fight about Phil after Alys gave him her key. This argument had gone back and forth for days, until their mutual friend Finn intervened. Finn worked in the records office for the Department of Veterans Affairs: a highly illegal file system search had turned up that, in fact, one Philip James Coulson had served in the Air Force as a pararescue jumper during the timeframe he'd given Alys, but all other personal information – date of birth, next of kin, home town – had been scrubbed. Finn had never seen anything like it. Both women took this as vindication – Alys because the details matched up, and Mariasol because there was still something weird going on with the files. The argument subsided to a low-grade trench warfare – static and sporadic, with neither side really gaining any ground.

However, as time passed without any further warning bells going off, Mariasol had very reluctantly come around. (To a limited extent. She'd still made a point of telling the man about all the terrifying characters who owed her favors, and how these formidable bravos would consider an injury to Alys as an injury to their little sister. To Mariasol's consternation, Phil had just looked vaguely amused and somewhat touched.)

This particular night, Mariasol had come over to Alys' apartment to help pack up the valuables Alys didn't want to entrust to the movers, but as the evening went on, packing started to give way to drinking up the bottles of wine that hadn't already been marked to make the trip. In the quarter-century they'd known each other, Mariasol had only ever seen Alys really drunk a handful of times, and while they weren't quite there yet, the wine was definitely having an effect.

"I can't believe he had so much stuff over here," said Mariasol, gesturing to the neat stack of boxes marked as Phil's.

Alys shrugged. "It just sort of happened."

"Hm," said Mariasol. The pause was so pregnant it was minutes from going into labor.

"Am I going to get another philippic on why this relationship is a bad idea?" Alys face screwed up and she gave a really unladylike, snorting laugh. "HA! A PHILIPpic!"

"I can't believe you just said that," Mariasol groaned. "That may actually be the worst pun you've ever made, and that's really saying something." She paused. "How did he take it?"

"He congratulated me. He said he never had any doubt about the outcome of the audition."

"And?"

"And nothing."

"What are you two going to do?"

"Rack up the frequent flyer miles, I guess. I've never used Skype, but it can't be that hard to figure out."

"This is really something you want to try to do? You feel like it's worth it? You've barely even seen him since you got back from Portland."

"He's been busy at work."

"And what is it that he does?"

"Mariasol, please let's not start this again."

"It's a valid question! I mean, you still haven't even met his family, have you."

"I hardly have room to talk when it comes to questions of familial estrangement."

(Alys' mother had reacted to the news of her divorce badly: she had told her daughter that she'd brought this on herself, that if she'd been a better wife the man would never have "turned queer," and that it was a good thing her father hadn't lived to see this day. Her aunts and uncle were of much the same opinion: Alys had not shown any restraint at all when it came to telling them what she thought of their interpretation, and as a result, Alys and her mother were not on speaking terms at the time of her mother's death. Alys had burned the remaining bridges when her mother's siblings refused to let her attend the funeral.)

"That's different," replied Mariasol.

"You only think it's different because you had a ringside seat," said Alys, taking another pull on her wine.

"I still think he looks like an accountant."

"Not when he's naked."

Mariasol rolled her eyes. "So the guy works out. There are a lot of gyms in New York."

Alys suddenly became very interested in her wineglass. "I'm not referring to his musculature. It's the scars."

"The scars?" This hadn't come up in the previous iterations of this argument.

"Three bullet wounds in his torso, two through-and-through; a series of what I think are cigarette burns; some clearly surgical incisions; I think his left leg might have been in skeletal traction at one point; and he's got lash marks on his back – I don't mean like David's last performance art piece, I mean like someone was trying to hurt him."

"That's creepy, Alys, that's really, really creepy. And when did you become an expert on scar tissue?"

"I attended the Google School of Medicine. Were you aware that there are some absolutely revolting pictures on the Internet?"

"You didn't mention all this before!"

"I didn't think it would help bolster my 'he's really not a serial killer' argument."

"It wouldn't have! You can't tell me you don't have questions about this! That you're not curious at all!?"

"Of course I'm curious."

"Then make him explain it to you! That's not unreasonable!"

"I don't want to make him lie to me. Pop was the same way. Don't ask where he'd been, don't ask where he's going, and really don't ask why he sometimes can't sleep at night. At least Phil doesn't have nightmares."

"For the life of me, I cannot understand why you're letting all this slide."

"It's complicated."

"That's a Facebook status, not an explanation!"

"You know, the lot of you wanted to see the Ice Queen melt, and now that it's actually happened..." said Alys, quietly sarcastic.

"That was their crack, not mine, and you know it. You know I know better than that. But I can't just ignore the fact that there are so many unanswered questions!"

"When I'm with him, I don't care."

"You're really that far gone!"

"I am perfectly aware how irrational this seems, and were I in your shoes, I'd be reacting the same way. When it comes to his character, I can offer you nothing except my own judgment." Alys' voice dropped to a whisper. "And I know that my judgment has hardly been infallible. But I feel how I feel, and all I can do is I hope to God I'm not mistaken."

This took the wind out of Mariasol's sails. She put her arm around Alys. "I want you to be right about him. You know that, don't you?"

"I know." Alys hugged her in return.

"I'm not nearly drunk enough for this conversation." Mariasol got up and split the remainder of the bottle between them. "Women always end up with their fathers, don't they..."

"I wouldn't go that far. But you'll still kill me if I start turning into my mother though, right?"

"Only if you promise to reciprocate."

"It's a pact." Alys held up her pinky.

Mariasol hooked her pinky around Alys'. "Done. I think your boyfriend might have some objections, though."

"Just tell him all about my mother and he'll understand that it serves the greater good." Alys giggled. "He is very strong, though. He does this one thing – oh God, it's so hot – he does this one thing where he picks me up and -"

"Yeah, okay, thanks, Alys, I got the picture." Mariasol drained her glass: she really wasn't drunk enough for this conversation. She looked over at her friend. "But you _hate_ being picked up."

"Not by him." Alys slumped back against the couch. "You know, it's just not fair. It really isn't. I spent the last decade scrambling for gigs and generally failing at relationships, and then all this has to happen at once."

"That's the way it goes, isn't it. Feast or famine. In the meantime, us single people with day jobs will completely fail to overflow with sympathy."

….

Coulson couldn't remember the last time he'd been this exhausted.

Had this been a normal assignment, he could have gone home on time every night, simply working the usual sixty hours out of a forty hour week, but this wasn't anywhere close to normal. For the two weeks of quarantine, every agent even remotely connected to Rogers' awakening stayed at HQ twenty-four/seven. Rogers' physical condition had been thoroughly assessed while he was still asleep, so all the tests and evaluations were concentrating on his mental status. Despite his seven-decade nap, Rogers' mind seemed sharp, but he was displaying – quite understandably – classic symptoms of depression and shock. Rogers seemed to be responding better to Jepsen than to Harris, not that that was saying much, but still quite expertly evaded the psychiatrist's questions. He was fine, everything was fine, no problems here, ma'am.

Coulson was not exactly surprised (and not entirely displeased) to learn that his boyhood hero was a really lousy liar.

When the two weeks were up, Rogers (unsurprisingly) jumped at the chance to get the hell out of SHIELD HQ, and, when presented with a list of SHIELD-owned properties in New York, he chose the apartment in Park Slope. Sitwell and Jepsen helped him get moved in, and started to arrange for his few remaining possessions to be brought out of storage.

Coulson and Sitwell were keeping the surveillance to an absolute minimum – no listening devices, no wiretaps, no cameras, no IR imaging – but still had to track Rogers' comings and goings, for his own protection as much as anything else. They limited SHIELD's presence on-site to a long-range monitoring team (all of whom had been threatened with permanent assignments to a listening post in Northern Greenland if they got made), and, well, what was more quintessentially New York than a busybody little old lady in the first-floor apartment?

Rogers had already helped her with her groceries twice.

The reports of Rogers' outer perimeter had initially been very promising: he seemed to be exploring the city, checking out old haunts and generally investigating the changes seventy years had wrought. Unfortunately, the progress ground to a screeching halt when Rogers asked to see SHIELD's files on his old comrades. They'd supplied them, of course, but after that his trips out into modern New York stopped. According to Mrs. Andropovitch, he started spending his days with his sketchbook, drawing people and places as he'd known them before the war. It wasn't necessarily a bad thing – Jepsen assured Coulson that it was part of the process: after all, he had to come to terms with his losses – but it was worrisome, especially if he didn't start showing signs of snapping out of it. (It really didn't help that, while Elsa Andropovitch might be a SHIELD agent of five decades' seniority and had, in her day, been one of the most feared assassins in the Western hemisphere, she was also a grandmother twelve times over, and the fastest way to her heart was to appreciate her cooking. Coulson was getting nearly daily e-mails castigating him for not taking better care of the young man.)

Jepsen's recommendation was clear: "Get him an assignment. He needs something constructive to do. He needs a purpose."

Coulson certainly agreed, but it was easier said than done! Covert activities were right out, hell; public activities were right out – the last thing Steve Rogers needed at this stage was to be subjected to the full-court press of the 21st-century media. Anything that resembled a milk run would be too obviously an attempt to draw him out, and therefore liable to backfire. Coulson didn't dare send him on anything too risky unless there was no other choice – they had no really firm grip on how a post-ice Rogers would react in a life-or-death situation at this point, and, while Coulson was 99.9% certain the Captain would acquit himself honorably, until he knew for sure he wouldn't risk any of his agents unnecessarily. Coulson spent hours poring over cases, trying to find something suitable. What a pity he couldn't have been with them in New Mexico last year!

Coulson dropped the files down on his desk, and rubbed his face. He was getting nowhere. It was time to get the hell out of here and get a decent night's sleep on something that wasn't the couch in his office.

The company would be much better there, too, assuming Alys hadn't given up on him.

….

It was late by the time he actually made it out of the building. He hadn't expected her to still be awake when he got home, but, to his surprise, he found her in her nightgown and bathrobe in the kitchen, heating something in a small pot. "You _do_live here. I was starting to wonder," she teased gently.

"Very funny." He came in and kissed her. "What are you making?"

"Hot milk, your recipe. I couldn't sleep." She smiled. "You see? I didn't burn the kitchen down or anything. Aren't you impressed?"

"I am." Hot milk with honey and nutmeg – his mother's recipe, actually.

"Julia Child didn't learn to cook until she was in her forties, so there's hope for me yet. Grandmamma used to swear by brandied milk before bed, but I like this better."

"I'm guessing the brandy-to-milk ratio was somewhat suspect."

"The milk was really more of a coloring agent." She got a second mug from the cabinet, split the liquid between them and handed one mug to him. She wrapped both hands around hers and leaned against the counter.

He sipped the hot drink gratefully; she'd gotten the recipe exactly right. His spirits began to rise, but, then again, that had very little to do with the milk. "What's keeping you up? Is everything all right?"

"Just the jitters." She gave him a rueful smile. "Remember I told you that it was a miracle they gave my resumé a second look?"

"Sure."

"It wasn't a miracle, it was an accident. I got shuffled into the wrong pile. By the time they realized it, I'd already made it to the final three."

He smiled. "Not an accident, then. A correction." Seriously, his girlfriend was moving away because someone screwed up the paperwork? Hill would laugh her ass off.

She shrugged. "So now I'm going to be the section leader for nine people who, one, I beat to get there, and two, doubtlessly all know that I shouldn't have even been in the running. It's terrifying." She grinned. "In a good sort of way, if that makes any sense. Like I'm waiting at the top of the first big hill on the roller coaster."

"It does." He kissed her forehead. "You'll do well."

"Thanks, I hope so. Oh! And I'm going to have to miss DiegoCon this year, can you believe it? First time in a decade..."

"I hope they appreciate the enormity of the sacrifice," he teased. "When is your going-away party again?"

She stared down into her cup. "Phil, I think the battery on your personal cell may have run down."

Huh? "Can't be, I just charged it –" He pulled the phone out of his pocket – the screen was black. It was dead as the proverbial doornail. "Oh, _Christ.__"_ His shoulders slumped a little lower as his good mood evaporated. "When _was_ the party?"

"Yesterday. I didn't have any other way to get ahold of you. I e-mailed, but..."

"I rarely check it anywhere but my phone. Oh Alys, I'm so sorry." He took her hand.

She twined her fingers in his and looked up at him. "Things haven't been going so well for you lately, have they," she said quietly.

"No, they have not."

She nodded. "Let's hope they improve, then."

"Look, I'm not even sure how much vacation time I have built up, but it's at least a couple of months – HR has given up complaining to me about it. I'll be out to visit as soon as I can get away."

"That doesn't seem to happen very frequently." she said, flatly but without rancor.

"The last few months have been..." It was time for the understatement of the year. "Atypical."

"Phil, just don't make me any promises you can't keep."

That hurt like the twist of a knife in his chest, but it's not like he could blame her. "I won't. Not ever. I am so sorry."

She gave him a half-smile and took his hand. "Come to bed. I bet your back feels like macramé."

….

On the day she was due to fly out, Mariasol drove Alys to the airport, and Phil promised to meet them there. He was (big surprise) late, and it broke Mariasol's heart to see the way Alys kept scanning the crowds, looking for him. Nevertheless, someone who had to get through security and past the gate attendants with a large musical instrument couldn't wait until the last minute (even if Alys' precious performance cello _was_ a ticketed passenger) and so, at the inspection line, Alys and Mariasol tearfully parted.

Mariasol stayed until Alys was clear, and then headed back out, stopping briefly at the bathroom to splash some water on her face. She was on the people-mover headed back towards the escalators when she saw Phil headed (at a pretty good clip) in the opposite direction. She got off the conveyor and turned around to chase him, ready to give the son of a bitch a big piece of her mind.

She had to run to try to catch up – he was moving deceptively fast for someone who wasn't breaking his stride. She slowed down, assuming he'd stop once he got to the security checkpoint and saw that Alys was nowhere in evidence, but he didn't: he walked right up to the head TSA agent with a commanding demeanor, held up what Mariasol assumed was some form of ID and said something to the guard.

Mariasol skidded to a halt when, to her very great surprise, the TSA agent straightened up slightly, nodded, and waved Phil through. She watched as he vanished into the crowds.

Well. That was very interesting.

Maybe it was time to go have coffee with Cassie and ask her some questions about SHIELD.

….

Captain Rogers' holding pattern intensified. He now seemed to be living in a rut between his apartment, the grocery, SHIELD HQ and the gym. Jepsen (as was understood) gave no details of her sessions with Rogers, but could report no progress. Off the record, she told Coulson, she'd be willing to bet a year's salary he'd been in psychotherapy before – he was too good at dodging questions to be a newbie. They didn't dare wait any more. Finding the perfect mission was no longer on the table: the next milk-run that came up, they'd offer it to the Captain.

Of course, they hadn't counted on the universe's sense of irony: the last ten days had been exceptionally quiet, a lull that had started the day he'd seen Alys off. (Flashing his badge at airport security like that hadn't been entirely kosher, but once he saw the way her face lit up when she spotted him at the gate, he couldn't bring himself to care. They'd held hands until boarding was called – he tried to think of something to tell her, but what couldn't be whispered in a darkened bedroom certainly couldn't be spoken aloud at an airport departure gate.)

He'd barely been home since she'd gone. Being at work made it easier to pretend she wasn't on the other side of the continent.

He received a letter from her – an actual, physical, postal-service letter – almost two weeks after she'd left. (He'd long since set it up so that any personal mail was forwarded to SHIELD.) There was no return address on the envelope, but he'd know her elegant handwriting anywhere. (It smelled of her, too. She'd found a perfume that managed to sweetly replicate the smell of a library – he really liked the scent, he really, really liked the scent of it on her, and what that said about the pair of them was nothing he wanted to examine too closely.) It was a pleasant surprise: he got it in the middle of a rough day, but he was a bit confused. It wasn't as if she'd dropped off the face of the earth – she hadn't even changed her phone number, and he was much more careful these days about keeping his cell phone up and running. They still texted and talked, when they could; she'd even given him a virtual tour of her new apartment, once they got Skype working, so why the snail mail?

He opened the short end of the envelope, pulled out the letter and unfolded the thick, smooth paper. It was much like any e-mail she'd sent him – news about settling in, a comic-book shop she wanted to take him to, several paragraphs gushing about the Portland Cello Project – but no less welcome for that, even if most of the information had already been overtaken by events. He reread the letter, unable to suppress a smile.

"I'm going to have to learn how to drive – living here without a car is simply untenable. I can't find a decent bagel for love nor money, and the hipsters, Phil, the hipsters! I thought Brooklyn was insufferable, but my God! I am a stranger in a strange land.

And I miss you so terribly.

-A."

The last sentence wrapped itself around his heart. There was still a weight in the envelope – he tipped it out, and a key fell into his hand. For one panicked second, he thought she was returning the key to his apartment, but no, like the other one she'd given him, it was shiny and new.

He curled his hand around the key tightly, until the sharp edges started to bite into his palm.

A chime from his computer alerted him to his next appointment. He slid the new key onto his key ring and started to open the desk drawer to put the letter in, but stopped half-way. Instead, he tucked it in his breast pocket.

Good God, he was getting soppy.

….

He actually did go home that night. He didn't bother cooking anything, even after his vending-machine dinner, but just slumped down on the couch. He turned on the TV and not-watched it for an hour or two.

He took the letter from his jacket pocket and read it yet again. He'd have it memorized, soon. Getting her key in the mail had really thrown him for an unexpected loop. They'd both been avoiding the topic of her departure and what that actually meant: it was so much easier, that way, but now he wasn't sure what to do, how to react, and nothing could be avoided forever. She'd asked him, that time, what he wanted out of the relationship, and the question still held, more so now than ever:

What did he want?

He wanted things to be as they had been, but obviously that wasn't an option. So what now? Unable to sleep, he turned the question over and over in his mind. She didn't want to end it – she'd always been clear on that point, and never more so than today. So what did he want?

In the wee hours of the night, when he was staring up at the ceiling, he was struck by a memory: months ago, he'd flown into New York from Moscow on a filthy, raw February night, complete with a raging storm that couldn't decide whether it was the last blast of winter or the first blow of spring. He'd gotten out of the debrief at 0230 and really should've gone to his own apartment – it was closer to SHIELD HQ than hers, and he could've used the extra sleep, but he didn't. He'd gone to her apartment instead.

He had silently let himself in, undressed and crawled into bed with her. She had half-woken, muttered "Cold" with a wrinkled nose, and had draped herself over him, so that he had found himself wrapped up in 110 pounds of warm, sleeping female. He remembered it so vividly – the bed was soft, the sheets were smooth; his head rested on hers and he breathed in the scent of her hair; the only sounds were the quiet ticking of the analog clock on her dresser and the slatting of the rain and sleet on the window. As exhausted as he had been that night, he had fought sleep tooth and nail to make that moment last longer. It was the first night he thought of her place as home.

That was the answer right there. That was what he wanted: a warm shelter from the howling winds, a small refuge of normality amid the chaos, entangled in the arms of the woman he… of the woman he…

Of the woman he loved.

Even if they would have to live on opposite sides of the country for a time, even if that sanctuary existed more _in __potentia _than in reality, he needed to know that it was at least possible. What he wanted would change almost nothing, in practical terms – it was merely a promise that, at the end of the day, neither of them would have to be alone if they didn't choose to be.

He let out the breath he hadn't even realized he'd been holding.

Of course, the major drawback here was that he'd have to actually ask her. He winced. He'd just have to write it out beforehand. God only knew what words would come out of his mouth if he didn't have a script.

….

For once – for once! – the stars seemed to align. A few days later, she called him with the news that her apartment had sold, and that she'd be in New York in a little over a week to finish the paperwork in person. He was a bit taken aback – he thought he'd have more time to prepare, but he wasn't going to pass up this opportunity. Besides, it was probably better if he didn't have a chance to overthink it.

It did mean, however, that he was going to need a little help. He called Pepper.

"Phil! How are you? Sorry I had to reschedule lunch last week – it's been an absolute madhouse over here."

"How are the dry runs going?"

"Well... I think. Tony's hoping to take the Tower live within the next few days."

"You're positive we're not going to end up with a smoking crater in the middle of Midtown?"

"So Tony promises me."

"Somehow, that doesn't actually make me feel better."

Pepper laughed.

"Listen, I need to ask a personal favor," he said.

"Name it."

"Well, it turns out that getting reservations for two at _Le__Bernadin_ on a week's notice is beyond even SHIELD's capabilities..."

"Say no more, I'll have my PA get on it. For two? I thought your cellist was in Portland."

"She'll be back for the weekend."

"Really? Oh, how lovely! Well, consider it done. I'll even do my best to keep Tony off your back."

He smiled. "Thank you. I really appreciate it."

….

Hill was next – Coulson couldn't possibly guarantee that nothing would come up at work to interrupt, but he'd do what he could.

"Regarding next Friday – I'll be taking some personal time. It shouldn't be an issue: everything seems to be in a holding pattern right now. Blake has agreed to switch weekends with me, so he'll be the Agent On Call."

"Not a problem. What's the occasion?" asked Hill.

"Alys is back in town."

"So soon?"

"On business – she has some loose ends to tie up."

"Is that the only thing she'll be tying up?" asked Hill with raised eyebrows and an audible leer.

Coulson kept his face straight. "Why? Are you volunteering for a threesome?"

Hill cracked up. "Dream on, Coulson. Yeah, it shouldn't be a problem. You kids have fun, I'll see to it you're not bothered for anything short of the apocalypse."

….

He raced home that Friday, knowing she'd be waiting.

"You're here," she smiled as she hurried to him. He met her half-way and held her tightly after she cast herself into his arms.

"How did the closing go?" he asked.

"Smoothly," she replied.

He ran a hand into her hair and pressed his lips to hers. She returned the kiss with equal fervor and Good God, how he'd missed her, missed this. His other hand slid down the side of her chest to rub circles up and down her hip. He was rewarded with a gasp and a shudder.

"Now, now, do we have time for this? You promised me a night on the town..." She pulled away a little, smiling.

"You'd rather go out to dinner than have sex with me?" He pressed forward, kissing down her neck and shifting his hand to her breast.

"At _Le__Bernadin_? I'll have to think about it," she said breathlessly. "Maybe if you give me a point of ref-... a point of ref-"

"What was that?"

"Nothing. Never mind. Don't stop."

….

He took far less time to get ready to go than she did, which left plenty of time for his nerves to start jangling. He drew in a breath, puffed it out, and ran through another check. He had the ring in his pocket and he'd already called the restaurant twice to confirm their 8:30 reservation. He pulled out the slip of paper that he'd written his speech on, and started to review.

Which was when his SHIELD-issued phone started to squawk out the emergency notification. _No__No__NO__NO__NO!__Not__now!_ he seethed, and grabbed for phone. _Hill,__if__this__is__your__idea__of__a__joke__…__._ Rage was replaced by a chilling wrench of fear as he read the message.

"REPORT TO PEGASUS WITH ALL SPEED, CONDITION DELTA. THIS IS NOT A DRILL."

Oh _fuck__._ He typed in the reply. "Acknowledged. En route."

He looked up. The hairdryer had just turned off, so he'd have a few minutes before she came out. He grabbed his laptop and started typing. Would Portland be far enough away from New Mexico? New York was further still, but if anything really bad went down, the Eastern Seaboard wasn't the best place to be. Honestly, he wanted to get her to the safest safe house SHIELD had, the furthest away from any population center – could he get her to Amundsen-Scott in time?

Probably not. Portland would have to do. Really, if that wasn't far enough, no place would be.

"I'm ready for dinner when you are…" She came out of the bedroom and stopped short. "What is it?"

"You've got to go back to Portland," he said evenly.

"What are you talking about? I just got here."

"I have to go. It's –"

"Classified," she finished shortly. "Phil, I'm sorry you've gotten called away. But I'm already set to spend the next few days in New York, and while I'd really rather spend those days with you, if I can't, I'm going to make the most of it."

"No. I've booked you on a flight from LaGuardia leaving in three hours. Sorry about the red-eye, but I had them put you in First Class. I've called for a taxi – it should be coming by in 45 minutes to pick you up."

She crossed her arms and set her jaw. "You're being awfully high-handed. You've got a lot of nerve – I think I've been exceptionally patient up until now, but this is ridiculous! You can't just – "

"Alys, please." He gently took her by the shoulders. "Listen to me. Some things have happened that... that I don't like, and I would feel much better if I knew you were safe. Frankly, if in two weeks' time, I look like an idiot who overreacted, I will be a very happy man. Please. Do this for me."

She pursed her lips, and her eyebrows drew together. She stared at him pensively for what felt like an eternity, then backed down. "All right. I'll go."

"I'll explain everything I can once this is over." He went to the closet and grabbed his mobility bag.

She nodded. "Phil?" she asked in a quiet voice.

He turned to her. Her mouth worked a little, like she was trying on and rejecting things to say. "Be careful," she finally said.

"I will. Call me when you get home." He kissed her passionately, and just like that, he was gone.

….

It wasn't until he was on the quinjet bound for New Mexico that he remembered the small box in his pocket. Under his breath, he cursed creatively, expansively and at length. That had been it. That had been the moment. He could have poured out his heart, offered her the ring and, most importantly, run away with entirely legitimate purpose afterwards, regardless of her answer. He sighed, stuck the ring back in his pocket, and cleared his head. He'd try again when he got back.

"Sir, we've got Agent Barton on the comm for you."

"Thanks. Pipe it back here."

….

"So any chance you're driving by LaGuardia?"

"I can drop you."

"Fantastic. I want to hear what happened with the cellist, is that still a thing?"

"She went back to Portland."

"What? Booo!" The elevator doors closed behind them. "Did you even get to make it to dinner?"

"No. Duty called, with its usual sense of timing. Thank you for getting the reservation, though."

"Don't worry about it – I'm just sorry it didn't work out."

"It happens."

Pepper looked at him directly. "This one is bad, isn't it."

"I can't really – "

"I know. But I've never seen you this flustered."

He looked down at his feet, then back up at her. "Yes. It's bad. It's about as bad as it possibly could be."

She bit her lip. "I know better than to think that Tony won't be in the middle of it."

"I wish I could say he won't. But we're doing our best to defuse the situation before it becomes that serious."

She tried to smile. "I know you are. Thank you."

….

_Wow, _he thought, _getting __stabbed __through __the __chest __really __hurts._

He was dying, wasn't he. He was vaguely disappointed that he didn't see a skeleton with a scythe. He was really good at chess, maybe he could have made that work for him.

Fury was there, yelling something. He tried to explain – if he was going to die, Fury should use that. Use anything. Get the job done. That was what they did.

The pain was starting to fade. He wasn't at all sure he should be happy about that. Alys was going to be pissed that he had a new scar… Oh God. He tried to reach for her letter in his breast pocket, but his arm wouldn't respond.

That wasn't good, was it.

_She'll __be __safe, __right? __They'll __stop __him __before __he __gets __that __far._ _She'll __be __safe, __she __has __to __be. __It's __so __far __away. __They'll __stop __him __by __then. __Thank __God __she's __so __far __away._ _I __hope __she__'__s __not __too __upset __by __this. _ An entirely new pain welled up in his chest. He never told her he loved her. He should have told her. _She __knows, __right? _ She must know. But three God damned words, was it really that hard to say three short words? And now he wasn't going to get the chance to. As if, if she loved him in return, she would have cared how badly he phrased it.

If only he hadn't been such a fucking coward.

And with that, Phillip James Coulson, Agent of SHIELD, died.

* * *

Before you guys start lighting the torches and sharpening the pitchforks, remember: there's another chapter coming. :)


	6. Chapter 6

I am SO sorry for the slow update – I truly did not mean to pull a George R. R. Martin. And as you've probably noticed, the chapter count changed. I gave up on the idea of wrapping this up in one chapter after the draft passed 12,000 words, which, I might add, is ten times longer than I ever intended this fic to be.

Yeah.

So, here is the next bit.

* * *

"Charging three-sixty! Clear! Holy shit… that actually worked… Tell the OR we're on our way! They've got two minutes to prep - he's redefining 'unstable'…"

….

Maria Hill and Nick Fury stood by a bed in the MedBay, staring at Phil Coulson as if they could simply will him to recover. The beeping monitors and the ventilator's hiss were all that punctured the heavy silence.

The tension between Fury and Hill was palpable.

"They say he should be fine," said Fury.

There was no response.

"He really was pretty lucky."

Still nothing.

"I mean, not lucky enough not to get stabbed in the first place, but a few millimeters to the right and it would've been a lot worse."

Answer came there none.

He sighed. "Go on. Say it."

"That was an unconscionable thing to do, sir."

"It worked, didn't it?"

"You could have at least told me."

"There wasn't time. To succeed, it had to be absolutely convincing. Given what was at stake, I'm not losing any sleep over it."

She crossed her arms. He was right, of course, but that didn't make her feel any better.

"It was his idea, you know," said Fury.

She laughed darkly. "That I can believe. Leave it to him to make his own death serve the objective."

"Let's just be glad it didn't come to that."

"This time."

He shrugged. This was the life they'd chosen, after all.

"When are you going to tell them?" asked Hill.

"I haven't decided. It may be advantageous to keep him under wraps, for a while."

She nodded.

Silence fell again. The machines whirred on.

She spoke again, some of the tension gone. "You going to tell him what you did to his trading cards?"

"When he's out of the anaesthesia."

She raised an eyebrow in his direction.

"Well," he amended, "when he's almost out of the anaesthesia."

She gave a gallows chuckle, then was quiet for another long minute. "He has someone."

"I know. But she's not his designated next of kin."

"No." Hill had already checked.

"Then it's the official story or nothing."

"But sir-"

"Do I stutter?"

"I can't just leave the woman hanging."

"Then tell her he's dead."

That option did not appeal, not when it wasn't exactly true. "I can't do that."

"Then leave it alone."

"He'll be pissed."

"In that case, you'll get the unique privilege of getting on Phil Coulson's ass for not keeping his paperwork up-to-date." Fury turned on his heel and swept out into the hallway.

Hill sighed and glared at the figure on the bed. "Wake the hell up, Coulson. You can't leave me in this madhouse by myself." She followed Fury out of the room.

….

From: Pepper 

To:

Deputy-Director Hill,

I'm sorry to trouble you – I can only imagine the levels of chaos with which you are dealing right now – but, frankly, I was at a loss for who else to ask. Tony and I were hoping to find out what arrangements have been made concerning Phil Coulson's funeral: we would both very much like to attend. In addition, while I've no doubt that SHIELD has notification policies in place concerning his family, I also know that he and his brothers were not close, and I did want to make sure that Phil's significant other has been informed.

I understand that privacy policies may prevent you releasing this information, but if you could at least point me in the right direction, I would greatly appreciate it.

Sincerely,

Pepper Potts

Hill swore.

She tapped her fingers on the top of the desk. Yeah, that was pure Pepper Potts - "Oh, hi, I'm just Tony Stark's PA, could you help me out here?" Like she was begging to be underestimated – as if Hill actually would. You know who underestimated Pepper Potts? Very stupid people. Very stupid people who generally found themselves stripped of their companies along with their golden parachutes in fairly short order. And she'd keep up that sweet voice and demeanor even as she was crushing their skulls to a paste under her Louboutin pumps. Virginia Potts and Natasha Romanoff had more in common than either of them realized.

And while she was on the subject, Pepper was one thing – she and Phil had been friends for a while – but since when did Tony Stark give a flying fuck what happened to Phil Coulson? Oh, right, ever since Fury had to trick the snot into getting his whiny-titty-baby ass in gear. Yes, it was very impressive with the nuke, well done Stark, but why did it always seem to take a better man's death to get Tony Stark pointed in the right direction?

Nevertheless, she couldn't reply to Pepper without assuming that Tony would find out. Which meant that any obvious attempt to deny, obfuscate or delay would be followed shortly thereafter by JARVIS sneaking into their systems. (The IT department was torn between declaring a vendetta to the death and total, abject worship at the Altar of Stark.)

Hill let out a sigh of frustration and rubbed her temples.

To: Pepper 

From:

Dear Ms. Potts,

You're correct – privacy policies do prevent me from giving out any sensitive information. We have yet to be able to contact his designated next of kin and until we do, we cannot disseminate any further details. Rest assured, as soon as I hear from them, I will be in touch, and I will keep Ms. Simon apprised of the situation.

Sincerely,

Maria Hill

Hill tapped her fingers on the desk again and hit send. It would have to do.

_Wake the fuck up, Coulson. I mean it. I don't have the fucking time to sort out your personal life._

….

The room was dark when he opened his eyes. There were tubes down his throat and up his nose and in his arms and everywhere. He could hear the hiss and beeps of the machines. This was the hospital, presumably. He vaguely wondered what had happened to him now. He heard a noise – there was another person in the room. He tried to turn his head, but the muscles wouldn't cooperate.

"Hey, you're back with us, Agent Coulson! Good to see you! Angie, get Dr. Collins in here, and page Director Fury…"

….

Time was passing strangely. An hour, a day, a week... he honestly couldn't tell how much time had gone by. They took out a lot of the tubing, which hurt, and that had made him cough, which hurt even worse. He looked around and spotted Fury standing at the end of his bed.

"SitRep," he croaked out.

He heard Fury laugh. "It's a long damn story. We won, but with a hell of a butcher's bill. Loki got the gateway open – he used Stark's building for a power source – but your team came through. They turned the Chitauri back and closed the portal. We're working on getting Loki, Thor and the Tesseract off-planet ASAP."

Thank God. "Barton?"

"We got him back. He's going to be fine."

"He's SHIELD."

"We'll take care of him, Phil, I promise. No one is blaming him for this."

"Good." Alys. He wanted to talk to Alys - Maria would be able to find her. "Need to talk to Hill," he said.

"She's all right, too. She's supervising the repairs on the Helicarrier. I've already messaged her; she'll be down to see you as soon as she can."

It would have to do.

….

The painkillers fogged his brain terribly, and as warm and pleasant as the blissed-out haze was, he was having trouble distinguishing what was reality and what was a side-effect. He was pretty sure he'd seen Pepper slap Fury across the face, which was pretty unbelievable, and Steve Rogers (!) had been standing at his bedside, telling him how glad he was that he was still alive, and that they'd talk more when he was off the painkillers.

Yeah, right, like that was really happening.

As nice as it was to see them all (especially Barton, thank God they got back Barton, every minute he was under Loki's control was like a knife to the gut), he needed Alys. He needed to talk to Alys. There was something he was going to tell her, something really important, something he wasn't going to put off again. And he was sure he'd remember what it was as soon as he saw her.

Pepper's face reappeared from the fog.

"Alys," he whispered to her.

Pepper smiled. She straightened up a little and squeezed his hand. "Sure thing."

"What did he say?" Was that Stark's voice?

"He said, 'Alys.'"

"Take the jet."

"Way ahead of you, Tony."

….

Given the situation, it wasn't the easiest thing for the CEO of Stark Industries to simply take off to Portland, but Pepper was able to clear her schedule (mostly) for the next thirty-six hours, and so the corporate jet landed at Portland International late that night. Her assistant had called ahead for a hotel room and a car to take her there – Agent Hill had assured her that Phil's cellist would be kept in the loop, so barging in after midnight seemed unnecessarily dramatic.

The next morning, she went to the address her assistant had supplied. The door was answered by a small, weary-looking woman.

"Yes?"

"Hello... are you Alys Simon?"

"Yes." The woman's eyes narrowed. "Forgive me, you must get this all the time – but my goodness, you're a dead ringer for Virginia Potts."

"Oh! Well, I'm glad to hear it. I _am_ Virginia Potts," she smiled. Stark Industries' CEO might be a high-profile job, but she wasn't that used to being recognized in public, at least not when she wasn't standing next to Tony Stark. "But I'm also a friend of Phil Coulson's –"

The woman's eyes widened and she suddenly gripped the door jamb. Her shoulders squared as if she were bracing for a blow.

"No! No! He's fine... well, not fine, but he's doing much better than he was!"

"Oh. Good." Alys stared at Pepper for a moment, then shook herself. "I'm sorry, where are my manners. Please come in." Pepper followed her in. "Do sit down," said Alys, gesturing to the dining room table. "Can I offer you some coffee?"

"Yes, thank you," said Pepper. The woman's face had gone eerily blank, and Pepper got the impression that she was in shock. A glance into the kitchen confirmed that theory - in the reflection on the glass door of the cabinet, Pepper saw Alys grip the edge of the sink with both hands, press her forehead to the countertop and take several deep breaths.

Oh, the poor thing!

Pepper looked away as the woman straightened up.

"Do you take cream and sugar?" came the voice from the kitchen.

"Black is fine."

Alys brought out two mugs and handed one to Pepper, and they both sat down. "Don't think I don't appreciate you being here to tell me this, but you're a long way from home – do you have business in Portland?"

"Well, no, really, I flew out here to see you. I was hoping you'd come back to New York with – "

"I can be ready to leave at your convenience, Ms. Potts." - Alys cut her off.

Pepper raised her eyebrows at that jarring reply. "Please, call me Pepper. And we can leave as soon as you're ready,"

"Let me just get a few things." Alys vanished into the hallway, but came back suddenly. "And do call me Alys."

Pepper took the opportunity to look around the apartment a little, trying to get the shape of the older woman's mind. Pepper smiled at the sight of the Captain America poster on the wall – spoils of that DiegoCon, unless she was very much mistaken. Had Phil had told her about Steve? That would be a hell of a secret to keep but probably not: until Phil had brought the briefs by, not even Tony had known.

Alys reappeared in a surprisingly short amount of time carrying a small valise and a large cello case. "I'm ready. If it's the same to you, I'll make what phone calls I need to in the car."

Pepper had no objection, and so, even with the morning traffic, they were able to board the plane within the hour. Alys was discreet, but Pepper didn't miss the way she glanced at the floor fore and aft – checking for the stripper poles, if Pepper had to guess: most people did. Pepper opted not to point it out.

"I have to make a couple of calls, I'm afraid – will you be all right?" asked Pepper.

Alys smiled politely. "I'll be fine, thank you."

Pepper was good at reading people: she had to be, in her job, but this woman was coming across as a complete enigma. Pepper simply could not find any purchase on that blank face to work with. She cared for Phil, that was obvious, but apart from that, Alys Simon was a total cipher.

"If you need anything, just ask Ron," said Pepper, gesturing to the steward. Alys nodded and thanked her again. The only two things that Pepper hadn't been able to delay when she was arranging this trip were the conference call to the Shenzen office and the VTC with their lobbying firm in DC, and even then she was making the Shenzen office come in at 4:00 am local.

It was good to be the Queen.

She headed back to where her assistants were setting up the first telecon. On the whole, she would much rather have been chatting with her guest – Phil always seemed so self-contained so it was only natural to be curious about the person who had broken through through that vast ocean of reserve – but duty, quite literally, called.

Thankfully, the conferences only seemed interminable. When they were over, Pepper gave her assistants more than enough work to keep them busy for the rest of the flight (as well as instructions that she was not to be disturbed) and invited Alys to have lunch with her.

"Will you have any trouble, taking the time off?" she asked Alys as the steward was serving lunch.

"No, thank goodness. They've been very kind. Ms. Potts – Pepper – I can't tell you how grateful I am for this," she said evenly. "I've been trying for more than a week to get a flight out – it's still a mess, even with LaGuardia and JFK open again. Honestly, if I had a license, I'd have rented a car and just started driving by now."

"Don't mention it." Pepper smiled. "The first words out of his mouth were to ask for you."

Alys seemed to bite down on a genuine smile – my God, a hint of emotion, finally – then swallowed hard. "You said he was doing much better...?"

"They didn't give you any details? Well, no, of course, they wouldn't. The only reason I know what happened is that Tony tends to run at the mouth when he gets angry. Phil was stabbed – the spear tore the pericardial sac, and caused a massive hemopneumothorax – that's when there's –"

"It's when there's air and blood in the chest cavity," finished Alys quietly, her face still a mask. "Stabbed – by one of the aliens on the street?"

"No, before the actual battle. He tried to take on their ringleader."

"Did he."

"I couldn't bring myself to watch the security footage, but Tony did – even wounded, Phil managed to tell Loki off, and then blasted him through a wall," said Pepper. "You know, he saved my life the first time we met, the night the arc reactor malfunctioned at SI. He's one of the bravest men I've ever known."

"That, somehow, is not a surprise." Again, that stifled smile, which quickly changed to a penetrating look. "SHIELD has been working with Iron Man for that long?"

"Well..." Pepper temporized. She was caught off-guard – she'd repeated the cover story over and over again since the incident, and most people had stopped questioning it ages ago.

"It's just either that or Mr. Stark has been fibbing when he says you've stopped making weapons. You and Phil are apparently close enough friends that you were willing to take time out of what I can only imagine is a mind-bogglingly busy schedule to come get me, all because he asked you to. I very strongly suspect if Phil knew you from any other context but work, we would have been introduced by now."

Huh. But then, it's not like she expected Phil's girlfriend to be an idiot. "True enough. Honestly, I'm so glad he's got you. He needs more of a life outside of work – being 'Agent Coulson' shouldn't be the whole of his existence."

Alys went very still, causing Pepper to wonder if she'd put her foot wrong. Alys sat back in her seat a little. Her face returned to a flat affect.

"He is 'Agent' Coulson, then?" asked Alys softly.

Pepper set down her drink. "You didn't know."

"He told me he couldn't talk about his job, so I never asked. He told me he worked for SHIELD."

"That's one way of putting it... he's the Director of SHIELD's right-hand man."

"Is he. How extraordinary."

_Oh shit. _Pepper mentally reviewed everything she'd told Alys so far – none of it seemed overly compromising, but that wasn't really her call to make, was it. They would have run a background check on her by now, anyway, wouldn't they? After all, if the two of them met at DiegoCon, then they'd been involved for a little over a year. Pepper resolved to do a better job guarding her tongue – she'd been living with Tony too long, of course Phil would have been more circumspect. Still, this seemed impossible. "You really didn't know."

"I suspected." Pepper gave her a questioning look. "He doesn't have the body of a desk jockey," Alys explained. "And when they started broadcasting the footage of the invasion, and I couldn't reach him on his phone, I left enough panicky messages that he would have contacted me if he could." Alys toyed with her water glass. "It was not my finest hour."

"It must have been quite a relief when you learned he wasn't..." Pepper found herself suddenly very glad that Agent Hill had been the one to make those calls.

"I nearly fainted," Alys replied shortly. She looked directly at Pepper. "Was Mr. Stark very badly injured? You can't turn on the news without seeing the footage of him flying towards that portal. That was astonishing."

"No, he wasn't. Thank God." Not that Pepper's nightmare generator had caught on to that. "But please, though, when you meet him, don't mention it. It's not something he enjoys talking about right now if he doesn't have to." Tony's nightmare generator had him chasing the nuke, missing the catch, and watching from a ring-side seat as New York City was consumed by a mushroom cloud. She very much doubted Tony had slept a whole night through since the week after the battle.

"Of course I won't, if you think that would be best..." Alys trailed off, as if expecting Pepper to continue, and that penetrating look was back. Pepper wasn't surprised: it was fairly out-of-character for Tony Stark to pass up a chance to bask in praise. Nevertheless, Pepper really didn't want to discuss it, and changed the subject quickly.

"Thank you." Pepper took another sip of her water. "It's gotten a lot better, but Midtown is still a mess so I had my assistant get you a hotel room just down the block from SHIELD, if you need it. We can cancel easily enough if you don't."

Alys looked a bit chagrined. "Good Lord, I didn't even think of that. I haven't been away long enough to think of needing a place to stay when I'm in New York. Thank you."

"Phil mentioned that you're a native – is everyone you know...?"

"No. Two good friends, and my ex-husband's brother," Alys said quietly.

"I'm so sorry," said Pepper.

Alys nodded. "Thank you. Really, it could have been so much worse. I'm not going to Phil's funeral, after all – I can get through anything."

Pepper gave her an understanding smile and tried not to think about what a close call that had been.

….

Tony met them at the airport – the plan was to go directly to SHIELD and have Happy take Alys' things to the hotel. As soon as they were under way, Tony started sizing her up.

"So you're Phil's cellist," said Tony.

"I am," Alys replied.

"I thought you'd be taller."

Pepper elbowed him in the ribs. Of _course_ he was going to try this routine again. Tony ignored her.

"Sorry to disappoint," Alys said calmly, but her voice was getting measurably colder.

"No, you're just not what I expected. I mean, usually when people talk about "the little woman" they're speaking metaphorically."

"As you say," replied Alys. Pepper kicked his ankle.

"I mean, seriously, do they even make cellos in your size?"

"Evidently," she said, the ice taking over her tone like an advancing glacier.

"Oh, for God's sake, Tony... Alys, I'm so sorry."

"Oh Jesus, you raise your eyebrow, too... Come on, Pepper, it's like they're Saavik and Mr. Spock."

Alys' careful composure cracked when Tony snarked about Phil: she frowned slightly. Pepper turned to start chewing out Tony, but Alys beat her to it. "Well, don't knock pon farr until you've tried it," she said in the same flat tone.

Pepper and Tony both turned to stare at her, as if they couldn't believe that sentence came out of the mouth of a petite cellist in a Talbots twinset. A grin spread across Tony's face. "Awww... is it nerd love? That's not what I would have expected from a classical musician..."

"You, on the other hand, are exactly what I expected from Tony Stark," she said.

"That was a hidden dig at me, wasn't it."

"It certainly wasn't intended as a _hidden_ dig at you," she replied. "And would you like some Windex for your glass house? I didn't realize the Iron Man suit had stacked heels."

Tony's grin got bigger. "If the platform shoe fits..."

"Seriously? 'Tony Stark, Super Genius' and _short jokes_ are the best you can do? I can't believe -" Suddenly, Alys coughed and stifled a gag. She pulled a handkerchief from her handbag, covered her nose and mouth, and shot Pepper and Tony a horrified look. "What on earth?" she asked, her voice muffled.

"Decomposing dead alien. The little bastards flew everywhere," said Tony.

"It's actually gotten quite a bit better – they've found most of them," replied Pepper. "You get used to it."

The conversation faltered as they started to enter the damaged section of the city – neither Tony nor Pepper were inured to the sight of the scarred buildings and the flurry of the cleanup, and Alys turned pensive.

"Has there been a lot of looting?" asked Alys.

"Not as much as you might think. Actually, keeping the scientific researchers out has been more of a problem," said Pepper.

"What?"

"Shallow-minded control freaks!" said Tony. "First contact with an alien species, right? Every biologist on the entire goddamn planet wants to get their hands on a sample. MIT's biology department got together with the university's urban spelunking team and managed to make off with a half a ton of what they're referring to as 'tissue samples' before they had to make their escape."

Alys smiled. "There's something marvelous about that..."

They pulled up to the front entrance of what used to be a very well-kept secret.

"Okay, we're here. Do you have your identification ready?" Pepper asked. Alys held up her passport. "SHIELD's security processes are not very flexible. Tony and I already have access to the unsecured areas, but getting you in may take some negotiation."

"One does not simply walk into SHIELD's MedBay," said Tony.

"Pepper's doing the talking here, right?" Alys asked.

In the lobby, the receptionist took their names and checked their IDs. "Please sit down over there," he said, gesturing to a small waiting area. Once they were out of earshot, the receptionist picked up the phone and started talking.

They only had to wait a few minutes. "Ms. Simon?"

The three of them turned. A man approached them from the elevator bank. He shook hands with Tony and Pepper, then turned to Alys.

"Ms. Simon, my name is Agent Sitwell. Agent Hill has already initiated your visit request." Tony and Pepper traded a look of surprise over Alys' head. "If you'll come with me, we'll get this sorted out."

He led them to a small office off the lobby and produced a sheaf of papers.

"If you could sign here – we need your consent to a background check."

"My retroactive consent," she stated as she signed the form.

Sitwell turned his palms up in a not-very-apologetic gesture. He set out a fingerprint platen, a retinal scanner and a DNA collection set. Alys raised her eyebrows, but submitted to the scans and allowed Sitwell to swab the inside of her cheek. Sitwell ran everything through the database on his laptop, then nodded. He handed over a plastic badge with her picture already on it. "This will grant you access to the MedBay and the MedBay only. If you are found unescorted in any other part of the installation you will be brought up on charges under the Espionage Act of 1917, per our treaty with the government of the United States. Do you understand?"

She nodded. "Yes."

"Sign here," he said to Alys, pointing to the correct spot on the sheet. When she was done, he looked up at Pepper and Tony. "I need the two of you to sign as witnesses." They complied.

"All right, you're good to go. Ms. Potts and Stark can simply walk you back to MedBay." He picked up the paperwork, tapped it into order, put it back in the file and walked to the door. Just before he left, he turned back. "And, Ms. Simon?" he smiled. "It's very nice to meet you."

"Thank you?" she said as he retreated. "That was unnerving."

"That was _easy_," said Pepper. "I'm surprised Maria didn't mention to you she was setting this in motion..."

"Who?" asked Alys.

"Agent Hill?" replied Pepper.

"I didn't... you know what? Forget it. Let's just go."

They hurried to the MedBay, and to the private room Phil had been moved to. Pepper and Tony hung back as Alys ran the last few steps. Pepper smiled. Tony reacted as he always did in the face of naked emotion. "Right, I'm not sure I can handle the sight of Coulson sucking face. I'm out of here..."

….

They told him they'd be stepping down the morphine a little, which was fine by him because, you know, right now, everything was. Admittedly, he would be quite glad to stop seeing things that weren't there – he had vague memories of Barton sitting silently next to his bed, which was entirely possible, and of babbling all about Alys to Natasha, but "Steve Rogers" came by to visit him again, and how likely was that to actually have happened, really?

A warm, callused hand captured his. "Phil…"

He tried to smile. That was the voice he wanted to hear. He opened his eyes. There she was sitting in the chair next to the bed, a terrified expression on her face.

"It's okay. Don't worry. I'm okay" He furrowed his brow. "You're not a hallucination, right?"

She laughed. "Not the last time I checked," she grinned. Ah. That was much better.

"I love you. Marry me."

She let out a huff of air. Her eyes now had tears in them, but somehow that was all right. "Tell you what: ask me again when you're not completely stoned on painkillers, and I'll say yes."

"Okay." He held onto her hand like it was a lifeline. "Don't go yet."

She stood up and gently kissed his forehead, then sat back down. "Don't worry. I'm not. I love you, too."

He drifted back into sleep again, still holding her hand.

….

He awoke again a little later. His head, for the first time, was clear – the wound ached, as it would, but the pain wasn't yet unmanageable. He looked over at the forest of poles by his bed – they'd put him on a PCA machine, which was good. Anything that gave him more control was good.

He looked over next to the bed and saw Alys. She sat reading her tablet, the chair pulled as closely as could be managed. She looked awful, careworn and tired, with dark circles under her eyes. He tried to put his memories to order – had he really babbled at her like that? Had she really answered like she had? Or had that all been an opium-dream? Did he dare ask her about it? _Oh, by the way, did I happen to propose the instant you got here?_

Yeah, no.

For lack of any better idea, he simply said, "Hi."

Her head shot up, and she dropped the tablet on the table.

"Hi." She paused, looking at him as if she couldn't believe he was there. They sat in silence for a long moment.

She spoke first. "So I guess now I know what you do for a living."

He laughed, a terrible wheezing sound that hurt. She blanched paper-white and lunged for the call button. He caught her wrist and shook his head. "'m okay. I'm okay. Just getting used to it."

She stood up, visibly dithering. She kept moving her hands like she wanted to touch him but didn't dare.

"It's okay. It's okay. I'm not that broken." He'd never seen her so upset, nor heard her voice so thick and scared. He hardly knew what to say.

"Oh _Phil_…" She perched on the very edge of the bed and carefully rested her head on his good shoulder, putting her arm in his lap. He snaked his arm around her waist and pressed his head to hers. She didn't cry, exactly, but her breathing started to hitch, and the thin cloth of the hospital gown on his shoulder grew damp.

He murmured reassurances, over and over again. "I'm all right. I'll be all right. It's okay."

"You told me to leave town and three days later New York was invaded by aliens! Did you know this was going to happen?" she asked.

"No. I just knew that something was. And New York will always be a much bigger target than Portland, so I wanted you far away."

He felt her nod.

"Is everyone all right?" he asked. "I mean, of your friends."

"Dashiell and Finn are dead. Angelica hasn't been found yet. Finn's funeral is the day after tomorrow, and I'm not sure what they're doing about Dashiell's yet. I don't think that even Millicent will be able to keep that from being a three-ring circus."

"I'm so sorry."

She laughed humorlessly. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure you did everything you could to prevent them..." She stood up to get a tissue and blew her nose. Her composure returning, she sat back down in the chair, and held his hand in both of hers, resting her arms on the bed.

"Are you all right? You look terrible."

"Says the man with the gigantic hole in his chest? Yes, I'm fine. I just haven't been sleeping well." The grip on his hand got tighter. "But you're going to be all right?"

"I promise. I'm going to get to spend some quality time with the physical therapists, but I'm going to be all right."

She nodded.

"You should go get some rest," he said.

"No. Not yet." She pressed a kiss to his palm. "I can't just yet." She rested her cheek on their clasped hands, and her breathing started to hitch again.

He found himself at a complete loss for words. If he'd been well, he would have gathered her up into his arms and held her and kissed her until she regained her equilibrium, but if he'd been well enough to do any of that, she wouldn't have been crying. She finally stopped and shifted a bit, resting her head on the blanket next to his thigh. He lifted his hand to stroke her hair and cup her cheek, and she started to doze.

He thought she was completely out, but just before she drifted off, she rallied a little.

"You know, it's the strangest thing," she whispered. "The man in the Captain America costume? He fought exactly like Steve Rogers. I mean _exactly. _It was uncanny... and all I could think was how much I wanted to be able to tell you that."

He smiled at her, but she was too out of it to notice. He took her hand again and held it tightly as his mind raced to figure out a course of action.

_How on earth am I going to explain all this to her?_


End file.
